Waiting for 2016 to end? You'll have to wait a second longer

If you are waiting for 2016 to end you’ll have to wait a second longer because international time experts are delaying the onset of 2017. The extra second added to 2016 is to compensate for a slowdown in the Earth’s rotation.

So as you count down to midnight on 31 December, count down from 11. Peter Whibberley, a senior research scientist at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, England, said: "Leap seconds are needed to prevent civil time drifting away from Earth time. Although the drift is small - taking around 1,000 years to accumulate a one-hour time difference - if not corrected it would eventually result in clocks showing midday before sunrise."

The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service in Paris decides when leap seconds are needed, and they are always announced about six months in advance. That is because the extra second can be a nightmare for communication networks, financial systems, and other applications that rely on precise timing, so they need to be programmed into computers to prevent mistakes.

This is the 27th time a leap second has been introduced since 1972. The extra second is normally added every two or three years. The last leap second was inserted just 18 months ago.

It's also possible for seconds to be removed, but this has never happened.

The leap second is almost always introduced in the final minute of June or December, but they can be implemented in March or September on rare occasions.

So 2016 can’t end a second too soon!

http://news.sky.com/story/just-a-second-extra-time-to-be-added-to-final-minute-of-2016-10711487

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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