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IERS Message No. 214                                    October 19, 2012
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Colloquium on the Future of UTC and Civil Timekeeping


[Please note: The IERS is only the distributor of this announcement
and does not organize or sponsor this meeting. Please contact the
organizers in case of questions.]


Requirements for UTC and Civil Timekeeping on Earth

A Colloquium Addressing a Continuous Time Standard

May 29-31, 2013

Jefferson Scholars Foundation
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, Virginia, USA

Co-sponsored by the American Astronautical Society and
the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Abstract submission is now open at:

http://futureofutc.org

until Friday, February 1, 2013.

Universal Time - the conventional measure of Earth rotation and
astronomical time-of-day - is the traditional basis for civil
timekeeping. Clocks worldwide are precisely synchronized via Coordinated
Universal Time (UTC), an atomic time scale recommended by the
International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

The 2012 ITU Radiocommunication Assembly postponed a decision to
fundamentally redefine UTC by halting the intercalary adjustments known
as leap seconds, which maintain UTC as a form of Universal Time.
Instead, the Assembly recommended further studies to ensure that all the
technical options have been fully addressed by 2015.

This meeting will provide a venue for discussing and documenting topics
related to fundamental requirements for civil timekeeping, how those
evidenced requirements and their derived specifications may be affected
or complemented by modification or supplementation of UTC, and
alternative timekeeping proposals that could meet requirements.

Co-chairs:
  Rob Seaman, National Optical Astronomy Observatory
  Ken Seidelmann, University of Virginia
  John Seago, Analytical Graphics, Inc.
  Steve Allen, University of California Observatories / Lick Observatory


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