And the motion to abolish the leap second was successful; it was decided today to increase the maximum permissible difference between UTC and GMT to one hour. We don’t know what will happen when this occurs (presumably a leap hour), but it will take millennia to happen.
No! Now all my solstice celebrations could be many seconds off.
/sarcasm
That is something to look forward to. Should be a nice party.
Good thing all computer systems (that have to deal with time zones) have that table installed. Check e.g. /usr/share/zoneinfo/leapseconds
I still smell a rat with the attention paid to this whole thing, and would like to know who are the corporate sponsors… (the relevant resolutions have nothing to do with science)
All of the 27 leap seconds have been positive, but there is some discussion that we might get some future negative leap seconds. With any luck the whole thing will cancel out.
We’ll need future Pope Gregory XXX to declare an extra hour on some New Years Eve to put things back in order.
Getting tired of fighting ignorance I think that I am going to enjoy it for a while instead, let’s see how long I can cope. @Schnitte sure knows the Bild Zeitung, for the rest, here is their short and snappy but highly scientific take on the leap second debate:
Our Earth is suddenly rotating faster and faster!
Will it have consequences for satellites and telecommunication now?
OMG, we are all going to die!
Seen today on the streets of Berlin.
I am just pissed off that the Catholic Church, the world government trillionaires, and the AIs have usurped the very heavens in order to turn us all into docile slaves and the tabloids are not making more of an effort to inform everyone all about it.