The controllers of clocks at the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) decided recently that 2016 ought to leap an extra second to stay in synch with Earth’s rotation. This will create a great deal of consternation for computers, thus IERS is giving six months’ notice for IT people to prepare themselves. Despite that lead time, about 10 percent of networks around the world are expected to fail, e.g.; a worldwide airline booking system that went down in 2012 for several hours when its computers’ internal clocks could not reconcile the discrepancy with outside systems. (I suggest you stock up on water, food stuffs and toilet paper.)
Here are some stats I gleaned from reports on this astronomical happening by New Scientist and National Geographic:
- Clocks will read 23:59:60 on the 31st of December (I am doubtful this will work on my timepieces)
- 86,400 seconds tick off every day on the master atomic clock for Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), however; the push and pull of the Moon causes the Earths massively heavy oceans to slosh around, which decelerates the spin between 1.5 and two milliseconds every 24 hours, on average.
- Gauging by sightlines from far off galaxies, IERS monitors changes to Earth’s spin. When it goes off by more than 0.9 seconds plus or minus, they mandate a 1 second adjustment.
- In 1972, when the adjustments began, the world got 10 extra seconds to make up for lost time. Since then 16 more seconds have been added—the last one on June 30, 2015. IERS have never removed a second. (If you are a rocket scientist, please compute how long it will it be until the Earth stops and let me know so I have plenty of time to begin packing up my things.)
Since antiquity the Earth’s rotation has provided us with our timescale – it is the Earth’s rotation that gives us our most basic unit of time, the solar day.
— Rory McEvoy, Curator of Horology, Royal Observatory Greenwich