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A comment on A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of June 2015. Parent comment

Re:A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of J... by lutorm on Monday January 05, 2015 @04:53PM (#8841465)
The repercussions of such a changed are addressed at http://www.ucolick.org/~sla/leapsecs/

Many things depend on using mean solar time, astronomy being one of them. The places that actually need a strict accounting of elapsed time can already use TAI or GPS time.

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Re:A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of J... by robbrown451 on Monday January 05, 2015 @05:20PM (#8841624)
Why does astronomy "depend" on anything like that? Why should they care how the rest of the world standardizes on time? Seems like they can adapt, rather than forcing everyone else to.

I'd bet the number of non-astronomers inconvenienced by leap seconds outnumbers astronomer 1000 to one.

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Re:A positive leap second will be introduced at the end of J... by nullc on Tuesday January 06, 2015 @01:56AM (#8843216)
Astronomy usually needs sidereal time.

Mean solar time is a largely mathematical construct that has no direct relation to anything immediately observable. (Notice the word 'mean' ... to _observe_ mean solar time you'd need to watch the sun for a whole year from the equator.)

To the extent that astronomy applications want solar time at all, they probably wants it with more precision than you get from UTC.

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