[time-nuts] International time meridian

[pvince at theiet.org]

Certainly we use UTC in Britain, although the Government are keen to try
and keep the Greenwich link, so the term GMT is erroniously used more often
than not (especially by the BBC!).


> Yes, there are people who want to stop this irritating leap
> second business until well after they are dead, but they
> have no "exit strategy" to deal with a much bigger
> jump in social time at a later date.

I believe the suggestion is to have a "leap-hour", and so when UTC gets
more than half an hour ahead of UT1, they will not have the 1-hour step
back at the end of the summer daylight saving time.  This will be in about
600 years, which means we don't have to worry about it for over twenty
generations, which gives us plenty of time to prepare, and a nice stable
time-scale until then. There is a chat-group dedicated to discussing the
subject (and often has very heated discussions!):

     http://rom.usno.navy.mil/archives/leapsecs.html

Peter


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