[tz] New Yorker article on David Mills and NTP
Paul Eggert
eggert at cs.ucla.edu
Tue Oct 4 21:20:46 UTC 2022
On 10/4/22 13:15, Michael H Deckers via tz wrote:
> in Paris will vote on the proposal D on pages 7..8 and 23..24 in
For those who haven't seen it, this proposal would abolish leap seconds.
Although it officially proposes only that we not worry about |UT1-UTC|
for at least 100 years (i.e., that we kick the can down the road to our
great-great-great-grandchildren), our descendants will almost surely
kick the can down the road to *their* descendants, which means leap
seconds will be abolished indefinitely.
Although this obviously won't work in the long term, leap seconds
wouldn't work either because days will become too long for them too.
Predicting length of day (LOD) is a tricky business with no real
consensus. That being said, Tyler predicted that for the next 3 billion
years LOD will increase roughly linearly, to 30 hours. So assuming our
timekeeping civilization lasts long enough, eventually we'll need
something, even if it's not leap seconds.
--
Tyler RH. On the tidal history and future of the Earth–Moon orbital
system. Planet Sci J. 2021;2(2):70. https://doi.org/10.3847/PSJ/abe53f
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