Re: [LEAPSECS] trading amplitude for scheduling

From: John Cowan <cowan_at_CCIL.ORG>
Date: Fri, 4 Aug 2006 14:50:31 -0400

Rob Seaman scripsit:

> Blame for what? I'm left wondering. Are we now fretting about
> the distinction between sidereal and solar time again?

I accidentally specified sidereal rather than mean solar days by
using the wording "the Earth rotates".

> A leap hour is just 3600 embargoed leap seconds.

Indeed. Which is why I am against the AHLP and in favor of letting
the SI seconds tick, allowing UT-TI to get as large as it likes, and
let the nations of the Earth make up the difference by adjusting their
local time offsets. No, that won't last forever, but neither will any
other scheme -- when we get to the 36-current-hour day, the connection
with solar time will *have* to be broken, unless we have evolved (or
evolved ourselves) to cope with very different sleep-wake cycles.

BTW, are we now in a position to give a reasonable figure for the
mean and standard deviation of the Earth's deceleration, or do
we not have enough data yet?

--
Evolutionary psychology is the theory           John Cowan
that men are nothing but horn-dogs,             http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
and that women only want them for their money.  cowan_at_ccil.org
        --Susan McCarthy (adapted)
Received on Fri Aug 04 2006 - 11:50:44 PDT

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