3 ms·

There's only a difference while the smear is incomplete, and the smear lasts (usually) 24 hours. Imagine you split the leap second in half. Instead of applying

There's only a difference while the smear is incomplete, and the smear lasts (usually) 24 hours. Imagine you split the leap second in half. Instead of applying it at T+0, you skip forward 500ms at T+0 and another 500ms at T+1. Now imagine doing the same thing, but 1/86400 of a second every second from noon to noon. You can imagine doing it at even smaller increments more frequently than once per second. At the start, both systems are in sync. One day later, both systems are in sync. You've simply applied the delta incrementally rather than all at once.

weare138 5y ago
>At the start, both systems are in sync. One day later, both systems are in sync. That's what I said? So they would be out of sync otherwise. Edit: Hold up, after rereading the thread I think we're all talking past each other here. I understand how time smearing works but when OP said they would sync up I read that as meaning they would somehow always sync up not just when they converge every 24 hours and the end of the year. But now I understand that's probably what OP meant.