[LEAPSECS] the big artillery

[Rob Seaman]

"Day" is a fundamental physical fact about a planet or moon.  "Minute" is an artificial concept.  Its intuitive role as a fraction of a day takes precedence over serving as a round number of equally artificial SI seconds.  There are two kinds of time that must be accommodated.

Rob Seaman
NOAO
--

> On Oct 30, 2014, at 8:06 AM, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk at phk.freebsd.dk> wrote:
> 
> In message <20141030143121.GA20281 at ucolick.org>, Steve Allen writes:
> 
>> I wonder if the ITU-R process can go to its completion without
>> introducing any document which points out that to omit leap seconds
>> from a time scale called UTC is to redefine the word "day".
> 
> You mean the same way leapseconds redefine "minute" by making
> them have the counter intuitive numbers of seconds ?