[LEAPSECS] presentations from AAS Future of Time sessions

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <20140112064503.GB23809 at ucolick.org>, Steve Allen writes:


>How they handle the leap second issue will assert whether humanity has

>any intent of keeping the meaning of the word "day" to be based on the

>rotation of the earth.


No, it will decide who gets to decide when "day" is:  The local and
therefore presumably legitimate government, or a bunch of scientists.

"day" is defined by what you clock shows, and clocks don't run on UTC,
they run on:

   UTC + some_constant_to_make_it_day_when_our_government_wants_it_to_be_day


Dropping leapseconds will only cause approx 0.5% more frequent
adjustments to that constant than the previous century has seen.

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