Don't forget your leap second
Tonight before midnight comes one extra second tacked on to June 30 – what are your plans?
JUNE 30 will be extended by one second tonight as the clocks hesitate just before midnight.
The leap-second which will be observed around the world is coordinated by two France-based bodies, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, based in Sèvres under the advice of the Paris-based International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service.
These French time lords have tonight decreed that the world will observe an extra second in order to correct a discrepancy between the rotation of the Earth, which is gradually slowing down and wobbling, and our atomic clocks, which are now so accurate they measure time through the vibrations of the element Cesium 133.
Without such a correction the natural day and night cycle of the Earth would gradually fall out of synch with our clocks, eventually leading to the sun being at its zenith at 3pm etc.
But a small change in time can have rippling consequences and while in France and Europe a leap second means an incredibly small lie-in, the other half of the world will be looking at hundreds of thousands of working computer systems all shifting time simultaneously.
The last leap second was added in 2012 causing problems for several major websites and grounding Quantas' aircraft as its check-in system crashed.
This year it comes right at the moment that Greece is expected to pay back or default on its loan to the IMF, adding a second of uncertainty into a financial system which has previously lost trillions of dollars in the space of 25 minutes.
The increasing vulnerability of such markets to upsets like the leap second has raised calls for it to be scrapped and replaced with a larger, more infrequent correction.
The chief scientist for time services at the US Naval Observatory, Demetrios Matsakis, has told the technology magazine Wired: “By my predictions, which would only be correct if the Earth’s rotation is remarkably predictable, it will take over 700 years before the clock says 11.30 when it would have said 12.00.”
Photo: Flickr/Robert Couse-Baker
