3 ms·
> The CGPM — which also oversees the international system of units (SI) — has proposed that no leap second should be added for at least a century, allowing UT1
by finnh 4y ago
> The CGPM — which also oversees the international system of units (SI) — has proposed that no leap second should be added for at least a century, allowing UT1 and UTC to slide out of sync by about 1 minute.
So, in one century, we'll get 1 minute's worth of drift.
Recall that we all share the same clock within timezones, and 1 minute of drift between atomic & solar clocks is the equivalent of traveling 1/60th of your timezone's width to the east or west ... something many people do every day as part of their commute. _Everyone's_ clock deviates from their local solar noon, and _nobody cares_.
Put another way: (at most) one north-south line in your timezone will have solar noon & clock noon line up. Over time the relative location of that line will move. Fine. Let's not screw with our clocks in an effort to keep the location of that line fixed.
- zokier 4y agoAnd of course there are things like Spain being in utc+1 despite sitting almost entirely west of Greenwich.
- debugnik 4y agoI can barely wrap my head around the idea of living in UTC when I remember that, my friends and I already feel like the sun sets too soon these days. We're just so used to 9:30pm sunsets during summer!
- layer8 4y agoThe problem is mostly (or so I’ve heard) that the drift is relevant for astronomical applications, and they rely on time dissemination which is done in UTC. If UTC decides to start deviating from TAI by dropping leap seconds, those applications will be in trouble. I’m sure that the problem is overblown, but this is the reasoning that was put forward in the past.
- ronsor 4y agoPeople who are using time for astronomical applications will simply have to track the offset if they need to. I'm not sure how that's much more problematic than the current situation.
- agrajag 4y agoAgreed. _Someone_ has to deal with the drift between astronomical time and earth time, better the class of software that deals with space than every time critical system in the world.
- myself248 4y agoBut leap seconds hose up astronomical applications too. They all start with TAI and then apply corrections as needed. There are lots more corrections than leap seconds, but they're applied proportionally, not as leaps. Leap seconds are a solution in search of a problem.