Wednesday, December 28, 2005

12/31/2005 > 24 hours

I was very interested in this article I found at CNN.

Long story short, December 31st will have an extra second added to the last hour of the year. Clocks usually go from 123:59:59 to 00:00:00. This year, the atomic clocks are having a second added. So, the time will go from 23:59:59 to 23:59:60 to 00:00:00. This will happen when it is midnight in the GMT time zone if I read the article correctly.

Looks like we will get to enjoy New Years Eve a second longer this year. What I did find interesting, is this is not the first year for the leap second. In fact, the first leap second happened in 1972. The last leap second was added in 1999.
A leap second is added to keep uniform timekeeping within 0.9 second of the Earth's rotational time.
So, not feeling just right, like something is off? Well there you go.

No comments: