F-ckin Leap Seconds, how do they work?

Tue Jul 3 23:59:54 UTC 2012

Tony Finch dot at dotat.at wrote
> No that is not correct, or at least it's nowhere near as simple as that.
> The atomic second was matched to the second of ephemeris time, and that
> was based on Newcomb's tables of the sun, which in effect used the average
> length of the second from the 1800s.
> http://ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/dutc.html

Last fall we held a meeting to consider how UTC might be changed and
what the implications of leaps seconds were.  The proceedings fill 400
pages of a book.

For the sound bite version (only 3 pictures) of leap seconds
http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/amsci.html

For a view of the international legal mess caused by leap seconds
http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/epochtime.html

For a blow-by-blow review of the international bureaucratic regulatory
situation for leap seconds see
http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/onlinebib.html

For a worked example that could alleviate the disagreement between
POSIX and leap seconds, and which might break the international
stalemate
http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/right+gps.html

In there are also links to those 400 pages of the book, but I suggest
that this forum is not the best place to rehash this information.

--
Steve Allen                 <sla at ucolick.org>                WGS-84 (GPS)
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