Earth’s rotation speed increases and decreases based on a number of factors, meaning that since 1972, the International Bureau of Weights and Measures has occasionally announced a leap second for Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), adding to a year to keep up in lockstep with the astronomical solar year. This is deeply annoying for the people who operate computer systems, and they would like it to stop. In 2016, Earth’s rotation began to increase, so we have not had to add a leap second in a while; however, the acceleration is getting to a point where we might be due for a negative leap second, or a skipped second, sometime soon. A new proposal would say to hell with all this, just switch to “leap hours” and we won’t have to deal with this for hundreds of years. The 2026 General Conference on Weights and Measures will settle the matter; recent projections put us at a 30 percent risk of a negative leap second by 2035.
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