For the first time in history, world timekeepers may have to consider subtracting a second from our clocks in a few years because the planet is rotating a tad faster. Wednesday's study in a scientific journal says that clocks may have to skip in a second — called a “negative leap second” — around 2029.
FILE - This image provided by NOAA/NASA In This May 31, 2018 satellite image shows the Earth’s western hemisphere at 12:00 p.m. EDT on May 20, 2018, made by the new GOES-17 satellite, using the Advanced Baseline Imager instrument. For the first time in history, world timekeepers may have to consider subtracting a second from our clocks in a few years because the planet is rotating a tad faster.
“We are headed toward a negative leap second,” said Dennis McCarthy, retired director of time for the U.S. Naval Observatory who wasn’t part of the study. “It’s a matter of when.”Earth takes about 24 hours to rotate, but the key word is about. Those daily fractions of seconds added up to whole seconds every few years. Starting in 1972, international timekeepers decided toor UTC. Instead of 11:59 and 59 seconds turning to midnight, there would be another second at 11:59 and 60 seconds. A negative leap second would go from 11:59 and 58 seconds directly to midnight, skipping 11:59:59.“In 2016 or 2017 or maybe 2018, the slowdown rate had slowed down to the point that the Earth was actually speeding up,” Levine said.
Without the effect of melting ice, Earth would need that negative leap second in 2026 instead of 2029, Agnew calculated.
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