Coordinated Universal Timeand the Leap Second

摘要

I will discuss the considerations that were important inthe design of the current version of Coordinated UniversalTime. The design includes the addition of additional “leap”seconds to keep Coordinated Universal time within 0.9s of the UT1 time scale, which is a proxy for the positionof the Earth in space. I will describe the advantages andproblems associated with the leap-second system, and anumber of changes that have been proposed to the realizationof the time scale.