WILL THIS DAY NEVER END?
You’re not imagining it. Today is longer, by exactly one second,
A leap second is being added to world time Tuesday to make June 30 a second longer.
The move is to ensure time stays in sync with the Earth’s rotation — which is slowing down because ocean tides are moving ahead of it due to events such as earthquakes, and the moon, which controls the tides, is trying to pull them back into alignment, says McMaster Universi- ty’s Rob Cockcroft. Without leap seconds added every now and then, “things would start drifting” over many years, says Cockcroft, a postdoctoral research fellow, so that, “for example, lunchtime would occur in the middle of the night.”
Despite concerns this year’s leap second could cause computer chaos, Cockcroft says most people “probably won’t notice something has happened.”
But leap seconds are not like leap years, which happen at regular intervals. Only 25 leap seconds have been added since 1972, he explained.
“Leap seconds adjust for the fact the Earth is slowing down its rotation so that the Earth day is getting longer.”
Astronomers with the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems in Paris monitor the situation and, when they anticipate the Earth day will be out by a second, they give notice to organizations involved to add it, usually on June 30 or Dec. 31, he explained. Like Cockcroft, National Geographic says most of us won’t notice the addition at 23:59:59 co-ordinated universal time (UTC), or 7:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
However, the L.A. Times reports that “in the past, the addition of a leap second has caused problems for tech companies like Google, LinkedIn and Reddit Inc.”
The Independent, a British newspaper, reports that this extra second could wreak havoc on the Internet’s infrastructure and notes that in 2012, websites such as Reddit and LinkedIn “faltered as servers got confused. In Australia, more than 400 flights were delayed as the Qantas (airline) check-in system crashed.”
However, Cockcroft says it’s unlikely that will happen again. “If software and programs have been updated, everything should go according to plan.”