[LEAPSECS] Negative TAI-UTC

[John Sauter]

On Sat, 2017-02-04 at 16:41 +0000, Clive D.W. Feather wrote:
> Looking only into the future, not historical data, what do people
> think the
> probability is that TAI-UTC will ever be negative? Should data
> structures
> be designed to handle this case or not bother?
> 
I think it is very unlikely that we will have 37 more negative than
positive leap seconds in the future.  See

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Deviation_of_day_length_from_SI_day.svg

for a graph of the deviation of the length of the day from 86,400 SI
seconds.  The red line would have to drop to 0 ms before TAI-UTC became
negative.

However, if I were designing the data structure I would use a 32-bit
integer for TAI-UTC, just to be safe.
    John Sauter (John_Sauter at systemeyescomputerstore.com)