Re: [LEAPSECS] Comments on Civil Time decision tree

From: Daniel R. Tobias <dan_at_TOBIAS.NAME>
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2005 14:33:00 -0400

On 26 Sep 2005 at 16:09, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

> Other more laid back parliaments like the Danish have not been able
> to find time to revisit the issue since 18xx and still use solar
> time at some more or less random coordinate.

You mean like the U.S. Congress?
http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/260.html

"...the standard time of the first zone shall be based on the mean
solar time of the sixtieth degree of longitude west from
Greenwich..." (and so on for all the other zones)

> Imagine for instance that we send a probe out of the solar system
> at seriously high speeds and it manages to get as far as 6 light
> months away: Under the current UTC rules we would be unable to
> upload a leap-second warning and get it there before it is too late.

I would suppose that such a space probe would have little need to be
synchronized with earthly solar time, and thus might be best off
operating on TAI, with any adjustments to UTC for the sake of humans
observing it on Earth being done at the Earthly end of things.

--
Dan
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Received on Mon Sep 26 2005 - 11:34:06 PDT

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