Why tech companies hate the leap second or leap second

Leap second or leap second has been periodically added to watches over the past half century to make up for the difference between the exact atomic time and the slowest rotation of the Eartha measurement similar to what happens with leap years.

A second is defined as 1/86400 of a mean solar day, and this is determined by the rotation of the Earth on its axis and its orbit around the Sun. But now time is measured with stable atomic clocks (International Atomic Time or TAI), and instead the rotation of the Earth has been reducing its speed. Thus the solar day has grown longer, at the rate of 1.7 milliseconds every century.

Since 1972, the authorities that regulate the measurement of time have added a leap second 27 times to the TAI, the last in 2016. The portal xataka details that on those occasions instead of going from 23:59:59 to 00:00:00 the clock indicated 23:59:60. So this situation is problem for computers.

These leap seconds go unnoticed by most of the inhabitants, but they are a problem for technology companies. This is because these leap seconds can cause problems for a variety of systems that require an exact and uninterrupted flow of time, such as satellite navigation, software, telecommunications, commerce, and even space travel.

Science Alert indicates that the leap second has caused problems for the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), which is responsible for Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the internationally agreed standard for setting time. For example, the UTC with respect to Ecuador is +5 hours.

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end of leap second

Scientists have long called for the scrapping of the so-called leap second, a request that finally came to fruition this November.

The 59 member states of the BIPM and other parties have passed a resolution to stop adding leap seconds by 2035 in the General Conference on Weights and Measureswhich is held approximately every four years at the Palace of Versailles, west of Paris.

The “historic decision” would allow “a continuous flow of seconds without the discontinuities currently caused by irregular leap seconds,” the head of the BIPM timing department, Patrizia Tavella, told the agency. AFP. “The change will take effect before 2035″, he added.

Russia wanted the measure to take effect in 2040, so it voted against it. Other countries had called for a faster timeframe, such as 2025 or 2030, so the “best compromise” was 2035, Tavella said, stressing that “the connection between UTC and Earth’s rotation is not lost.” “Nothing will change” for the public, she added.

Leap seconds will continue to be added normally for now. But by 2035, the difference between atomic and astronomical time will be allowed to increase to more than one second.said to the AFP Judah Levine, a physicist at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology.

“The highest value has yet to be determined,” said Levine, who spent years helping draft the resolution along with Tavella. Negotiations will be held to find a proposal by 2035 to determine that value and how it will be managed, according to the resolution. Levine said it was important to protect UTC time because it is in charge of “a global community effort” in the BIPM.

GPS time, a potential rival to UTC governed by atomic clocks, is run by the US military “with no global oversight,” Levine said. One possible solution to the problem could be to let the discrepancy between the Earth’s rotation and atomic time increase up to one minute.

It’s hard to say exactly how long that might take, but Levine estimated 50 to 100 years.. Instead of adding a leap minute to the clocks, Levine proposed a “sort of blob,” in which the last minute of the day takes two minutes. “The progress of a clock slows down, but it never stops,” he said. (YO)