[time-nuts] FW: Bulletin C number 30

[Mike S]

At 03:02 PM 7/4/2005, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote...
>Instead, if we abandon leap-seconds, then we finally have a _truly_
>universal timescale.
>
>It will not be locked to any more or less random piece of geophysics,
>anyone with a cesium clock and a set of gen-rel coordinates will be
>able to figure out what time it is, and time intervals can be measured
>and compared without weird gottchas.

If that is to be the case, then we should move to decimal time, instead of the awkward 60/60/24/365.x we have now, for the same reasons the metric system has been applied to other measurements. 

What sense does it make for an astronaut on mars to keep 24 hour days? Why not make the second 10^9 Cs transitions, instead of 9,192,631,770?

Fact is, time measurement _is_ based on geophysics, and the absence of leap seconds wouldn't make it "universal" in any way. That being the case, it is not unreasonable to keep it properly aligned. Leap seconds have been around long enough that any IT system which can't accommodate them is poorly designed.