Clocks on June 30th of this year will do an unusual thing - they will count 23:59:58, 23:59:59, 23:59:60 and then 00:00:01
Last time we added a Leap Second was back in 2012 - I had posted here, here and here.
More here - from the UK Telegraph:
Leap second: French time lords add one second to 2015
The year 2015 will be slightly longer after the Paris Observatory announced it was adding a leap second to clocks this summer.
On June 30, dials will read 11:59:60 as clocks hold their breath for a second to allow the Earth’s rotation to catch up with atomic time.
Atomic time is constant, but the Earth’s rotation is gradually slowing down by around two thousandths of a second per day.
It is the task of scientists and officials at the International Earth Rotation Service based in France to monitor the planet's rotation and tweak time where necessary. Some years the Earth runs bang on time and no adjustment is needed.
Software companies are already bracing themselves for problems. When the last leap second was added in 2012 Mozilla, Reddit, Foursquare, Yelp, LinkedIn, and StumbleUpon all reported crashes and there were problems with the Linux operating system and programmes written in Java.
It will be interesting to see what applications get tripped up this time around... First one was in 1972 and this is the 2015 event is the 26th Leap Second.
