[LEAPSECS] Metrologia on time

Poul-Henning Kamp phk at phk.freebsd.dk
Tue Aug 2 13:39:47 EDT 2011


In message <20110801231231.GO21093 at ucolick.org>, Steve Allen writes:

>The most recent issue of Metrologia has appeared, entirely on time.

>http://iopscience.iop.org/0026-1394/48/4


There are a lot of good stuff there, that's certainly a keeper.

I don't care much for or about the turf-pissing in the first couple
of papers about who should own UTC in the future, that is Parkinsson
talking.

I find it much more intesting that Bernard Guinot goes on the record
on page 183:

They are not theoretically predictable, but smooth enough
for an empirical prediction to less than ±1 s over 3 years

and:
Tests on real data from 1955 to the present, made by the
author, have shown that a linear prediction based on one
year of values of UT1 - TAI led to a maximum error less
than 0.6 s in two years after the last observed values.
After three years, the maximum was 1.0 s.

So giving us 3 years notice of leap seconds instead of six months
should be a total no-brainer.


--
Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.


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