GoKawiil
Tech News
International timekeeping bodies have voted to abolish the leap second, the practice of periodically adjusting Coordinated Universal Time to match Earth's rotation. Instead, UTC will now be allowed to drift up to an hour from Earth's actual spin before any correction, likely via a future 'leap hour,' becomes necessary. Officials say such a correction probably won't be needed for centuries.
Standards body CGPM will vote in mid-October on ending the leap second, the periodic one-second adjustment used since 1972 to keep atomic clock time aligned with Earth's rotation. The move is being accelerated because the next adjustment could, for the first time, require subtracting rather than adding a second—a scenario computer systems have never had to handle. In its place, officials are proposing a leap hour that would only realign timescales once they drift a full 3,600 seconds apart.