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2005 Now One Second Longer

If you were hoping for a little extra time this year then your hopes have been answered. The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) has announced that they will be adding one extra second this year to make up for a slowdown in the Earth's rotation. This is also known as a leap second. A LiveScience.com article explains the need for the extra second.

On Dec. 31, the clock will read like this as it leads into Jan. 1, 2006:

23h 59m 59s ... 23h 59m 60s ... 00h 00m 00s. Normally, the seconds would roll from 59 directly to 00.

The IERS keeps track of time by measuring the Earth's rotation. The IERS measurement is then compared to an atomic clock. When there is a difference between the time on the atomic clock and the time measurement by the IERS the leap second is used. There have been 22 leap seconds since 1972.

Posted on July 8, 2005

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