At a conference held in France, scientists and representatives of government voted Friday to eliminate leap seconds by 2035. This was according to the global timekeeping organization.
Like leap years, leap seconds were periodically added to clocks in the last 50 years to compensate for the difference between precise atomic time and Earth’s slower rotation.
Leap seconds may go unnoticed by most people but they can pose problems for systems that need an uninterrupted flow of time such as satellite navigation and software.
It has caused a headache for the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), which is responsible for Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) – the internationally agreed standard by which the world sets its clocks.
The 59 member states of the BIPM passed a resolution to end adding leap seconds before 2035. Other parties also supported the resolution. General Conference on Weights and MeasuresThe, which takes place approximately every four years at Versailles Palace west in Paris.
Patrizia, the head of BIPM’s Time Department, said to AFP that this “historic decision” would allow for a “continuous flow of seconds without discontinuities currently caused due to irregular leap seconds”.
She said via email, “The change will become effective by or before 2035.”
She claimed that Russia voted “not in principle” against the resolution and that Moscow wanted to delay the date of its entry into effect until 2040.
Others had requested a faster timeframe like 2025 or 2030. She said that 2035 was the “best compromise”.
France and the United States were two of the leading countries in this transition.
Tavella stated that “the connection between UTC (Universal Time Coordinates) and the Earth’s rotation is not lost”.
She added that “Nothing will Change” for the public.
What is a leap minute?
Seconds were long measured by astronomers analyzing the Earth’s rotation, however the advent of atomic clocks – which use the frequency of atoms as their tick-tock mechanism – ushered in a far more precise era of timekeeping.
However, Earth’s slightly slower orbit means that the times are not in sync.
To bridge the gap, leap seconds were introduced in 1972, and 27 have been added at irregular intervals since – the last in 2016.
According to the proposal, leap seconds will be added as usual for the moment.
However, by 2035, the difference in atomic and astronomical times will be allowed grow to a greater than one second, Judah Levine of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology told AFP.
Levine, who worked for years with Tavella to draft the resolution, said that “the greater value is yet unknown.”
Negotiations will be held in order to identify a proposal for 2035. This value will be determined and how it will handle, according the resolution.
Levine said that UTC time is important because it is controlled by a “global community effort” within the BIPM.
Levine explained that GPS time is a possible UTC rival, and it is being managed by the US military, “without worldwide oversight”.
The solution could be to let the discrepancy in the Earth’s orbit and atomic time build up until a minute.
It’s difficult to know how long it might take but Levine predicted anywhere from 50 to 100 years.
Levine suggested a “kinda smear” in which the last minute takes two minutes, instead of adding a leap minute to clocks.
He stated, “The advancement of a clock slows down, but never stops,”
