The leap second is canceled – atomic time applies

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Now time can take its toll. No matter how fast the Earth rotates. World time authorities decided that on Friday at a meeting in Versailles, France, when the leap second was abolished.

The most important issue is maintaining the concept that time is an international quantity, says Judah Levine, a researcher at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

It is the time measured by atomic clocks around the world, and it is what Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is based on. The problem with UTC is that the Earth usually rotates a little slower, but also recently faster, than UTC, which means that from time to time so-called leap seconds are introduced over the years, to allow the Earth catch up with the offspring. Wall Clock.

– From a technical point of view, there are big problems with adding leap seconds, it adds a break in time, creates a break in the time continuum, and is a real pain, Levine said in an interview with TT about it earlier. general.

its ruin

Leap seconds have made it difficult, among other things, for technology companies, for whom timekeeping is very sensitive, causing, among other things, sites to crash when leap seconds are introduced in recent years. For example, Reddit and Linkedin crashed upon entering a leap second in 2012, and the same thing happened to Instagram and Netflix in 2015. Twitter had problems with errors at times when users tweeted.

A total of 37 leap seconds have been entered since 1972. First, 10 were entered in one fell swoop, and another 27 seconds were entered continuously in subsequent years.

From the year 2035 and one hundred years onwards, the Earth is allowed to spin at any speed it wants, and the time of the most accurate atomic clocks remains constant.

For most people, it makes no difference at all. It will be about a minute or so in the time period.

New problems arise

The problem with the new method is that some sciences depend on the time of the Earth’s rotation, including navigation systems and calculations regarding the position of various celestial bodies on the Earth’s surface.

“There’s a whole class of astrology apps and publications that contain tables with different positions that just won’t work with a solution like this,” Levine told TT.

This means that there is likely to be a separate time scale alongside UTC, as the gap between them will slowly increase.

Russia was against abolishing leap seconds because the Glonass satellite navigation system, unlike the US GPS, uses them. In order to please Russia, the change will only take effect in 2035.