World's timekeepers to vote on ditching the leap second
International timekeepers are meeting in Versailles to vote on the potential retirement of the 'leap second' used to synchronize atomic clocks with Earth's rotation. The move aims to address technical inconsistencies that affect modern systems like GPS.
Why it matters
The decision has significant implications for global digital infrastructure, financial markets, and precision technology that rely on standardized time.
The decision to retire the leap second has taken more than two decades of negotiations with everyone from software engineers to philosophers. ( Unsplash: Matt Seymour )
Link copied Share Share article On 27 days in the past century, time has gone backwards for a second.
These extra "leap seconds" were added to keep our ultra-precise atomic clocks aligned with the Earth's slightly less reliable rotation.
But we have probably already leapt our last second.
Later this week, delegates will meet near a French palace in Versailles to decide whether to abandon the leap second for good.
In its place, if the vote succeeds, it will ask people centuries in the future to observe a "leap hour".
By traditional definition, a second is an 86,400th of a day.
But Earth's rotation is not perfectly uniform. Our 24-hour days can vary in length by a thousandth of a second (a millisecond).
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