FW: Bulletin C number 30 (fwd)

[Markus Kuhn]

Daniel GAMBIS wrote:
> A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2005.

"Olson, Arthur David (NIH/NCI)" wrote on 2005-07-05 12:42 UTC:
> Long overdue!

Not so. Daniel Gambis mentioned at a meeting in June 2003 the
expectation of some people at IERS then, that there probably would not
be a leap second before 2006. It seems they were wrong, but only by one
second!

If I naively extrapolate the recent trend at

  http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/atomic.pdf

it may be quite a few years until we are going to see another one.

Earth's rotation has been accellerating almost continuously since the
invention of the leap second in 1972, as if our planet is keen to get at
least one negative leap second in before they are abolished ...

Markus

http://www.mail-archive.com/leapsecs@rom.usno.navy.mil/msg00163.html
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/time/leap/

-- 
Markus Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ || CB3 0FD, Great Britain