The Leap Second May Be Running Out of Time
The proposal would avoid a first-ever negative leap second and reduce the risk of outages in telecoms, power grids and computer networks, experts said.
- International timekeepers are voting Thursday on a proposal to eliminate the 'leap second,' which has kept Coordinated Universal Time in sync with Earth's daily rotation for decades.
- Accelerating Earth rotation creates a 30% chance of a negative leap second by 2035, an unprecedented event that could create havoc in digitally time-stamped systems, according to a 2025 report.
- Computer systems often fail to handle leap seconds, causing glitches in data servers. Operators of critical infrastructure are 'largely unprepared' for such a move, according to BIPM.
- If the leap second is abolished, officials may introduce a 'leap hour' instead. Louise Devoy, senior curator of the Royal Observatory Greenwich, said this 'punts the problem to future generations.'
- This shift reflects a move toward stable, man-made atomic clocks over Earth's unreliable rotation. Jeff Sherman, group leader of the National Institute of Standards and Technology's Time and Frequency Division, called Earth a 'lousy' clock due to wobbling.
52 Articles
52 Articles
The Earth is spinning too fast, the computers are panicking, Versailles is pulling the emergency brake. What this means for our sleep.
It is easier to add an hour than to remove a second. This has been confirmed by researchers in Versailles after this week's notable debate about clock changes. But the "leap hour" is not something we who live today will experience.
A study from Upper Austria raises critical questions about the fairness of our health system. Patients should pay thousands of euros for previous surgical appointments. And: One second sounds like little, but can have a big impact worldwide. For decades, our time measurement has been corrected with so-called switching seconds. That's soon the end. You can see that and more in the news on Friday, October 16, with Stefana Madjarov.
An extra second, which has been introduced every few years to keep time in step with the Earth's rotation, is being abolished.
The schematic second serves as a balance between atomic clocks and the Earth's rotation. From 2027 it will no longer exist.
The General Conference on Measurement and Weight decided in Paris on the issue of switching second introduced in 1972. Background: concern about consequences for IT systems.
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