[LEAPSECS] "China move could call time on GMT"

[Rob Seaman]

Clocks worldwide have always kept time-of-day.  Astronomers are the canaries in the coal mine in this situation.  That astronomers will incur great expense and require great effort to fix what ain't broke *does not* imply that everybody else is somehow off the hook.

It is this unprecedented proposal to move away from time-of-day that is demanding everybody - not just astronomers - go to inordinate lengths.

Also "sounds like" is not a coherent engineering plan.  No community - not even the atomic timekeepers themselves - have invested appropriate resources in investigating the implications of and mitigation required by this proposal.

Rob Seaman
National Optical Astronomy Observatory
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On Dec 30, 2011, at 9:30 AM, Peter Vince wrote:


> It sounds like the astronomical community have the systems in place to deal with the erratic rotation of our planet, can they not just leave the rest of us to have a simple timescale - save us all going to inordinate lengths and expense?

> 

> Peter Vince