Explained: What is leap second? Why are we scrapping it?
2 years, 4 months ago

Explained: What is leap second? Why are we scrapping it?

Hindustan Times  

The world’s top metrology body has decided to end the practice of adding ‘leap seconds’ to official clocks to keep them in sync with Earth’s rotation from 2035. So leap seconds are added to stop UTC going out of sync from solar time at a rate of about one minute every 90 years. But as the leap year is typically announced only six months in advance by the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service in Frankfurt, Germany, they cannot be pre-programmed into software. However, a major mishap can happen if the seconds get enforced inconsistently in different systems, clocks can temporarily go out of sync, probably bringing snags that can stop computers and leave international financial markets exposed to attack.

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History of this topic

Why time will stop in 2029: Scientist says a 'negative leap second' will be needed to adjust for Earth's rotation speeding up
1 year ago

Why time will stop in 2029: Scientist says a 'negative leap second' will be needed to adjust for Earth's rotation speeding up

Daily Mail  

We all know that an extra day is added in February once every four years – known as a leap year. To make up for irregularities in the Earth's spin, leap seconds are traditionally added - but for the first time, a second could be taken away, possibly in 2029 A leap second was last added on December 31, 2016. …

A faster spinning Earth may cause timekeepers to subtract a second from clocks
1 year ago

A faster spinning Earth may cause timekeepers to subtract a second from clocks

Hindustan Times  

Earth’s changing spin is threatening to toy with our sense of time, clocks and computerized society in an unprecedented way — but only for a second. Clocks may have to skip a second — called a “negative leap second” — around 2029, a study in the journal Nature said Wednesday. “We are headed toward a negative leap second," said Dennis …

A faster spinning Earth may cause timekeepers to subtract a second from world clocks
1 year ago

A faster spinning Earth may cause timekeepers to subtract a second from world clocks

Associated Press  

Earth’s changing spin is threatening to toy with our sense of time, clocks and computerized society in an unprecedented way — but only for a second. Clocks may have to skip a second — called a “negative leap second” — around 2029, a study in the journal Nature said Wednesday. “We are headed toward a negative leap second,” said Dennis …

Take a second to look before you leap
2 years, 1 month ago

Take a second to look before you leap

Live Mint  

A year from now, we’ll have just entered the quadrennially longer version of February. Which means one year—365 days, remember?—of these slightly shorter days lasts almost a third of a second less than you expect; three years, and we’ve lost nearly a full second. The Earth’s orbit around the Sun was long ago calculated to be not exactly 365 days …

'Leap second' will be scrapped by 2035, as it could wreak havoc on GPS and telecoms
2 years, 4 months ago

'Leap second' will be scrapped by 2035, as it could wreak havoc on GPS and telecoms

Daily Mail  

This is because it disrupts systems the rely on regular timekeeping, like GPS However, scientists have ruled to scrap the leap second by the year 2035 This is to keep them in time with the Earth's rotation, which can change speed While we all know about February's extra day during a leap year, there is another time-keeping alteration we make …

Tech giants campaign to stop ‘devastating’ leap seconds
2 years, 8 months ago

Tech giants campaign to stop ‘devastating’ leap seconds

The Independent  

Sign up to our free weekly IndyTech newsletter delivered straight to your inbox Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter Sign up to our free IndyTech newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy US tech giants and timekeeping authorities have launched a campaign to scrap the …

Time flies: The Earth is rotating faster than expected
4 years, 2 months ago

Time flies: The Earth is rotating faster than expected

Salon  

Did you ever wish that 2020 — the year which brought us a worldwide plague, a massive economic recession and the potential fall of American democracy — could have gone by a little more quickly? According to scientists, it actually did: The Earth rotated on its axis at an unusually fast speed throughout the year, with 28 of the planet's …

Not just another second of time…
6 years, 9 months ago

Not just another second of time…

The Hindu  

If you were under the impression that the Earth’s rotation serves as the basis for measuring hours, minutes and seconds, you are in for a rude shock. There are, however, other complications… The mean solar day – the average length of a day based on how long it takes the Earth to rotate – hasn’t been 86,400 since the 1820s. …

‘Leap second’syncs Indian time with Earth’s spin
8 years, 2 months ago

‘Leap second’syncs Indian time with Earth’s spin

The Hindu  

A ‘leap second’ was added to the Indian clock at 5:29.59 hours on Sunday to synchronise with the Earth’s rotational clock. As the atomic clock at the National Physical Laboratory here struck 23:59:59 last night, it was programmed to add an extra second to 2017 to compensate for a slowdown in the Earth’s rotation. As a result, astronomical time gradually …

A leap second will be added to 2016.
8 years, 3 months ago

A leap second will be added to 2016.

Slate  

If, like me, you’re counting the seconds until you can kick 2016 out the door, I have a tiny bit of bad news: You’ll have to count a little higher to do so. Every day, it’s one second behind, clicking over to midnight one second after the first clock does. However, to keep it synchronized with the other clock, we’d …

An extra second is being added on to 2016
8 years, 8 months ago

An extra second is being added on to 2016

The Independent  

Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. A ‘leap second’ will be added to the end of 2016 – which is …

Wait just a (leap) second
13 years, 2 months ago

Wait just a (leap) second

Slate  

This summer will be a little bit longer than usual. The two systems aren’t quite in synch, though, since the Earth counts a day as a tiny bit longer than the atomic clocks say it is. But that’s not the case: the reason we add leap seconds is because the two time systems have clocks that tick at different rates, …

Take a flying leap second
16 years, 3 months ago

Take a flying leap second

Slate  

I hope you liked 2008. We have leap days because the length of the Earth’s day isn’t an even fraction of the year, and we add a day in every fours years to help even it out. That’s why scientists decades ago changed the basic unit from the day to the second, and then decided to base the length of …

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