this post was submitted on 01 May 2025
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[–] nBodyProblem@lemmy.world 1 points 22 hours ago

Simplicity and precision.

Who said it was only measured as an integer? Seconds are a decimal value and many timekeeping applications require higher precision than to the millisecond. Referencing an epoch closer to our current time allows greater precision with a single double-precision floating point number.

Want to reference something before J2000? Use a negative number.

It’s independent of earth rotation, so no need to consider leap second updates either unless you are converting to UTC. It’s an absolute measure of time elapsed.