Leap Seconds

[+EraSeek]

There is a proposal to eliminate the leap second which keeps our clocks in tune with the slowing rotation of the earth. First of all why would this concern GPS users? GPS is all about time, even more than location.

Here is a short article on the proposal: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/science/the-leap-seconds-reprieve.html

Now the US is for the idea, and Britain is against.One reason not mentioned that Britain may be against is that the sliding of local noon would take authority away from GMT, the world standard. Personally I would like to see the elimination of local time usage and have a world over use UTC coordinated universal time (basically Zulu time or GMT). The military already does this. Instead of adapting the clock to our area, we adapt to the clock, the same clock everyone uses. Gone would be Daylight saving time or standard time, gone would be all these varied and gerrymandered time zones the world round. No need for leap seconds unless you wished to keep the brits happy. Time would be and remain precise via the vibrations of the cesium atom or mercury ions to the accuracy of 1 second to every billion years or so. In one part of the world you would eat lunch at 10:00, another place it would be 19:00 (7pm). If this would confuse world travelers you could reference place names, coordinates, addresses, with a local noon tag which is quite simple and precise, say, 7600 main street, Seattle, Wa, 20:00 UTC.

Crazy, dumb, good idea?

But then I would like to see coordinates replace house addresses too...

Just a thought.

Edited January 20, 2012 by EraSeek

[jholly]

There is a proposal to eliminate the leap second which keeps our clocks in tune with the slowing rotation of the earth. First of all why would this concern GPS users? GPS is all about time, even more than location.

Here is a short article on the proposal: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/20/science/the-leap-seconds-reprieve.html

Now the US is for the idea, and Britain is against.One reason not mentioned that Britain may be against is that the sliding of local noon would take authority away from GMT, the world standard. Personally I would like to see the elimination of local time usage and have a world over use UTC coordinated universal time (basically Zulu time or GMT). The military already does this. Instead of adapting the clock to our area, we adapt to the clock, the same clock everyone uses. Gone would be Daylight saving time or standard time, gone would be all these varied and gerrymandered time zones the world round. No need for leap seconds unless you wished to keep the brits happy. Time would be and remain precise via the vibrations of the cesium atom or mercury ions to the accuracy of 1 second to every billion years or so. In one part of the world you would eat lunch at 10:00, another place it would be 19:00 (7pm). If this would confuse world travelers you could reference place names, coordinates, addresses, with a local noon tag which is quite simple and precise, say, 7600 main street, Seattle, Wa, 20:00 UTC.

Crazy, dumb, good idea?

But then I would like to see coordinates replace house addresses too...

Just a thought.

 

This has zero effect on GPS, GPS is adjusted to UTC but does not use leap seconds. Currently GPS time is ahead of UTC by 15 seconds. (epoch January 6, 1980) The clocks in the satellites are adjusted for relativistic effects. And if your wondering, Loran-C is also not affected by leap seconds. The current Loran-C is ahead of UTC by 24 seconds. (epoch January 1, 1958)

Edited January 20, 2012 by jholly

[yogazoo]

Personally I wouldn't be against the idea of a common worldwide time. It would be very odd at first but one would get used to it quite rapidly I would imagine. What doesn't exist is a political will to embark on such endeavor. So for realities sake, at least for the forseeable future, regardless of how much sense it makes, it isn't going to happen. Plus the idea regarding a "local noon" would present similar problems to what we have now, i.e. where would you set the boundaries for local noons?.

 

Just think about proposing a worldwide time to Americans (of which I am), just for a second... Did you get the same nauseous feeling I did?

[+dfx]

Remember Internet Time? And how well it got adopted?

[+EraSeek]

No, I know it has no effect on GPS time, I did not say it did. But GPS is all about time. It is the worlds most effective, efficiant time transfer mechanism. Likewise is is not all about location. Every cell tower has multiple GPS antennas on it and they are not there for location. It was just a comment as to why the topic is relevant to us.

 

Local noon is not set by boundaries. Local noon is when the sun is highest in the sky wherever you are. A spot, no range to it; but I agree with all else you said. Kinda like "metric", makes much more sense, but guess we aren't going there.

[+phlatlander]

Well, regardless of whether or not one time would be more sensible, we humans cannot agree on much or accept change. Take, for example, ISO 8601 where representation of dates and times is an international standard covering the exchange of date and time-related data. It was issued by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and was first published in 1988. An example, this post; 201201202135, unambiguous and straightforward. YYYYMMDDHHMMSS. As far as I remember this format was adopted by ICAO way back when but has not gained general acceptance.