Today will be one second longer than any other day. This day we add one leap second at 6:59pm central time or 23:59:59 UTC time. This is done to keep atomic and astronomical clocks synced together. They begin to differ because the rotation of the Earth isn't always constant, it is actually slowing down, but does so unpredictably. This makes it very hard to set clocks accurately. The first time we saw leap seconds added was back in 1972, and at the time they had to add 10 seconds because the two different clocks were so far apart. While many people won't notice the change, there could be some issues with computers that haven't been programmed to this extra second. The last time we added a leap seconds - in 2012 - there were some computer sites that crashed because they weren't adapted for the change. For more information on the leap second you can click here. I hope you enjoy your extra second!
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Last Day of June Gets an Extra Second!
Today will be one second longer than any other day. This day we add one leap second at 6:59pm central time or 23:59:59 UTC time. This is done to keep atomic and astronomical clocks synced together. They begin to differ because the rotation of the Earth isn't always constant, it is actually slowing down, but does so unpredictably. This makes it very hard to set clocks accurately. The first time we saw leap seconds added was back in 1972, and at the time they had to add 10 seconds because the two different clocks were so far apart. While many people won't notice the change, there could be some issues with computers that haven't been programmed to this extra second. The last time we added a leap seconds - in 2012 - there were some computer sites that crashed because they weren't adapted for the change. For more information on the leap second you can click here. I hope you enjoy your extra second!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment