UN set to dump GMT for tech-friendly Atomic Time
Just a minute...
What you need to know about cloud backup
Greenwich could lose its place at the centre of global time if a move to "atomic time" is voted in by the International Telecommunication Union in Geneva in January 2012.
Time scientists are discussing the implications of the change today in pre-vote meeting organised by the Royal Society. British newspapers are mulling how British pride would be dented if the riverside patch of South London gets taken out of the centre of world time-keeping. The Sunday Times said that it would truly mark the end of our days as a "Victorian superpower".
Time has been measured by atomic clocks since 1972, but the hyper-accurate clocks do not measure time as experienced by humans on Earth because the planet's rotation is uneven. Currently, the atomic clocks are adjusted to fit into time as humans experience it, with leap seconds every few years pushing the atomic clocks into line with "human time".
The divergence between GMT and Atomic Time is tiny. At the moment, the leap seconds are applied in a stepped scheme.
The current system of leap seconds causes significant difficulties for computer systems that rely on processes being performed in exact sequence. See how Google grappled with the problem here. Mobile phone networks and GPS systems in particular suffer when leap seconds strike. Continuous atomic time would be much easier to manage.
The ITU document says:
The result of the process would be to stop applying leap seconds at an agreed point and permit the difference with UT1 to increase at a rate of approximately one second per year. The projection by the BIPM for the (UT1 - UTC) difference to accumulate to one hour is approximately 550 years.
In the new system, it is possible there would be leap minutes once or twice a century.
Alternatively we could keep human and atomic clock times running concurrently: "Knowledge of the precise difference between UTC (human time) and UT1 (atomic time) would continue to be monitored so that any user desiring UT1 would have the information to correct his readings of UTC to UT1 should he choose to do so," reads the International Telecommunications Union's proposal. The ITU is the UN's specialised telecommunications agency.
The implications of the alternatives are being discussed.
One positive outcome for Brits distressed by the loss of our Victorian superpower status is that the end of GMT as an international standard could accelerate the move to keep British Summer Time into the winter, letting us have lighter evenings.
The ITU posed these questions to member states:
- Do you support maintaining the current arrangement of linking UT1 and UTC (to provide an approximate celestial time reference by the use of a stepped atomic time scale)?
- Would you support the revision of Recommendation ITU-R TF.460-6 to provide a continuous time scale?
So far, the ITU has received replies from just 16 nations for the latest survey (out of a total of 192, 55 of which participate in the formation of UTC). But with 13 in favour of the change, and just three against, the bill looks likely to pass, so far.
Read the document here [.docx download] ®
COMMENTS
no, feck off!
If a leap second occurring on a regular basis causes problems, then a leap minutes every century, when people will have forgotten the last time it occurred and it catches everyone by surprise, is going to cause chaos.
If you want lighter evenings, move further south, or to europe. I've very much enjoyed waking up an hour later this week than I did last week and wish we could move the clocks backwards in the Spring too, but we can't that's would be madness. It's going to get dark in the evenings eventually in the winter anyway, no mater what time zone we're using. If we stick with BST year round, then people will start wanting a BST++ in the summer, and a BST+ in the winter and before long, we're on the same timezone as Japan. Deal with it, we live in this part of the world, this is how the daylight hours work. Feck off elsewhere if it bugs you that much.
"One positive outcome for Brits distressed by the loss of our Victorian superpower status is that the end of GMT as an international standard could accelerate the move to keep British Summer Time into the winter, letting us have lighter evenings."
Those of us living in the North would like to register our opinion that this would be a Bad Thing. We don't want to wait until 10 am for dawn to break!
Utter bollocks
"and GPS systems in particular suffer when leap seconds strike"
No they do not! GPS maintains it own 'atomic time' and has a UTC-GPS offset that is steeped as required. It was designed by people who knew what they are doing. Same goes for most astronomical systems that rely of TAI, etc, etc.
This is, or should be, a non-issue as there are plenty of solutions out there. What we have is really a debate about trying to fix broken software by changing how things have been done for years, rather than getting those behind such systems to fix them.
If you NEED to worry about leap seconds, get you own system fixed!
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner
Enabling efficient data center monitoring
Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
