[time-nuts] GPS Leap Second

Tom Van Baak tvb at leapsecond.com
Fri Aug 5 10:39:27 EDT 2005


> On the other hand, I'm still wondering if the data itself is correct.  
> It looks like @@Gj is saying that the leap second will occur on Jan. 1 
> at 00:00:00.  Is that the correct thing for this message to indicate for 
> a leap second that will occur on Dec. 31 at 23:59:60?  Perhaps the @@Gj 
> message really means "the leap second is inserted before this 
> date/time"?  The Motorola documentation that I have is unclear on this 
> point.

I've seen this here and there. Some systems
say the leap second will occur on 2005-12-31
while others report 2006-01-01. Although the
12/31 date is probably more "correct", I don't
think it makes much difference; because in
the case of leap seconds it's unambiguous.

Note also, given the population distribution of
the Earth, far more people see leap seconds
on July 1 or January 1, local time, than June
30 or December 31.

While I get to preview UTC New Years or leap
seconds at 4 PM PST here in Seattle (UTC-8),
there's a billion people in China (UTC+8) that
have to wait until 8 AM on Jan 1.

By the way, if someone has access to world
population sorted by timezone see if you can
calculate the exact percentage of people left
of Greenwich vs. right of Greenwich.

/tvb





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