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

[Tony Finch]

Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:

> On Jan 4, 2012, at 10:57 AM, Steve Allen wrote:

> >

> > The articles talk about disconnecting the clock from the sun, but

> > really that happened 40 years ago.  The draft proposal before the

> > ITU-R is about disconnecting the calendar from the sun.

>

> Can you explain this more?  The current calendar is good to about

> 20k-30k years only.  The ITU-R proposal will add about 2-3 days to the

> drift of the calendar in this time frame in how we recon the time (if

> I'm recalling the estimates right), but due to rounding we'll have

> drifted off a similar amount in that time.


No, the changes to UTC will have no effect on the calendar. The calendar
is about fitting days (reckoned according to local civil time) into years,
and local civil time will continue to be roughly in sync with apparent
solar time.

Tony.
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