[fitsbits] Re: leap second alert

[Steve Allen]

In article <833go4$e6m at post.gsfc.nasa.gov>,
William Thompson <thompson at orpheus.nascom.nasa.gov> wrote:

>communicated to the address below.  The simplest reservation is, if UTC-TAI
>were to remain at a fixed value, why have UTC at all?  Why not simply use TAI?

Indeed.  We already have GPS time, which is a constant-offset variant
of TAI, whose transmission format supplies the necessary extra info:
the difference between UTC and GPS.

At face value this proposal would seem to create yet another atomic
timescale which differs by only a few seconds, confuses the
nomenclature, and fobs off the responsibility for implementing a
global leap hour onto our descendents sometime between the years 3000
and 4000.
-- 
Steve Allen          UCO/Lick Observatory       Santa Cruz, CA 95064
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