US DoD Poll On Leap Seconds

@10u8 writes "For time scales to leap, or not to leap, has been the question here before. The ITU-R will be considering leap seconds again in a few weeks. This week the USNO posted a survey about leap seconds by the US DoD. The issue has civil implications as well as technical ones, and there is a demonstrated way to respect the history, remove leaps from navigation and POSIX time, yet keep the sun overhead at noon."

Comments

Are leap seconds really all that important?

[NoobixCube]

I thought we had leap years to take care of the discrepancy between our calendar and the actual orbit around the sun. Would a leap second even be made longer by any noticeable amount? What about sporting events? Someone who misses out on a world record by a tiny bit would complain that the record h older had more leap seconds in his race! (Okay, that one was a joke, but the rest I'm serious about)

Re:Are leap seconds really all that important?

[maxume]

The leap seconds do the same thing as the leap years (each leap day moves the calendar closer to the orbit, but not exactly to the orbit).

Kill DST instead!!!!

[wealthychef]

I'd be more interested in killing Daylight Savings Time than dealing with Leap Year.

Re:Kill DST instead!!!!

[Kjella]

Killing it? I want to change them completely, and wintertime too. Now, I live a bit further north than most people (60 degrees latitude) and what happens in the winter is that I, like most people, head to work in the dark and come home in the dark. Maybe you get to see some sun on your lunch break, but unless you got an office with a view you won't see much of it otherwise. If we have like 6 hours of sun, they should be 4PM-10PM so you can do some outdoor activity after work. What happens now is I sit indoors during the day because of work, and I sit indoors in the evenings because it's dark and cold outside. I haven't got any stats to back it up but I'd think most people work indoors these days, the reason to have light == noon so you could run around outside just isn't there. I'd be happy with mornings that suck (some more) and evenings that were bright and nice all year round.

Re:Automated and consistent leap seconds

[klapaucjusz]

There should be a planned algorithm that kicks in,

This assumes that we know when, in the future, we'll need to insert leap seconds. And we don't.

Leap seconds are introduced in order to compensate for medium-term variations in the earth's rotation speed. We don't have a good understanding of the way the earth rotates -- knowing what UTC time it will be in ten years' time is about as difficult as predicting the weather for next week-end.

Yep...

[msauve]

and if anyone doesn't like leap seconds, all they have to do is use one of the time scales which don't use them, like TAI.

It's exceedingly silly and stupid for people to keep trying to change UTC so it doesn't track solar time. That what it was intended to do. If you made the wrong choice, live with it, or change time scales. If it's being forced on you, quityerbitchin', and convince whoever decided on UTC to change. Stop trying to turn UTC into something it isn't, there are other people out there who made an intelligent decision, and depend on it's characteristics.

Re:Who cares about all this timezone crap?

[mr_matticus]

I think the US should have one time zone, and it should be based on NYC time. -5/-4 UTC for everybody! Who cares if California would have the sunset at 2230 today?

Fine by me, and I'm a native Californian.

There's no rule that says business hours need to be 9 to 5. Since you already have to convert what "time" it is in a faraway place you're calling, it's not a big deal. In San Francisco, I can't make any calls after 1pm to East Coast offices and expect to get anything done. What the clocks say over there doesn't really matter. For all intents and purposes, New York business hours are 6am to 2pm from my perspective.

I'd be content for the entire planet to move past the idea of time zones entirely. It's an outdated idea from a time when you needed physical references to the passing of time, and when it didn't matter that the times didn't line up in faraway places. Just think of all the things it would simplify: flight arrivals/departures, conference calls, news stories--and it would make am/pm an unnecessary distinction, too. 0514 would really be 0514. Everywhere. I'm okay with "business hours" for me being, say 0100 to 0900, and 2200 to 0600 in some other place. They're just numbers.

Tradition and conditioning, however, are unbeatable--and the idea of "noon" being the middle of the day has undeniable intuitive appeal (even if it's rarely accurate).

Re:Leap seconds fix a diferent problem

[n3tcat]

so our clocks are more precise at measuring how fast the earth does a twirl than the earth is at twirling?

wait, what?