Wolfgang S. Rupprecht wrote:
That doesn't work. 13 does not divide evenly into the 365.24 rotations
the Earth performs as it revolves around the Sun once. Nor does 28
divide evenly into the 27 days and 8 hours that elapse for every cycle
of the moon.
We obviously need to move a large number of massive weights down near
the equator to slow the earth down till we achieve a nice round number
of days per year. Say 256. Each year the International Earth
Rotation Service http://www.iers.org/iers/ could issue a report
showing how well the tuning was working and if weights needed to be
added or removed. ;-)
More seriously, I was just struggling with leap seconds this morning,
trying to reconcile un*x time, GPS time, UTC time and TAI time. What
is the current feeling in the linux community with respect to leap
seconds? Does the kernel's time still jump around when a leap second
is applied or subtracted or can the corrections be applied in
user-space like the DST corrections are?
-wolfgang
Funny that you should bring this up. When I was a boy engineer at Bell
Labs, I received a technical memorandum that proposed changing the
earth's orbit and rotation speed to accomplish pretty much what you've
suggested. IIRC, the writer proposed a 400 (or 500?) day year; each day
would be divided into 25 (or 20) hours so as to get 10000 hours per
year. Smaller time measurements were to be in decimal parts of an hour.
The writer would accomplish this by firing a great quantity of rocket
engines deployed along the equator. His proposal concluded with a cost
study expressed in kGNP (kilo gross national products).
The memorandum was dated April 1, 1962.
-- cmg
