Time Leaps Forward
We all know about leap YEAR, but what about leap second? As 70 UN nations argue over whether to abolish it, there’s actually a war going on over time.
Leap year adds a day to February every 4 years, while a the leap second is added every few years in order to synchronize the world’s scientific timekeepers–atomic clocks–with the earth’s rotational cycle. The next leap second is scheduled to be added on June 30, 2018. Atomic clocks, which were created in the 1950s, rely on the precise way that electrons jump around in atoms.
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