鈥淧EOPLE worry that we鈥檒l soon be eating lunch at midnight,鈥� says Robert Nelson of the Satellite Engineering Research Corporation in Bethesda, Maryland. But that will not happen, he says, even if a proposal to abolish the leap second goes ahead.
An extra second is added to atomic clocks from time to time to keep them in sync with the solar day, which is steadily lengthening as the Earth鈥檚 rotation slows. But the practice could be abolished when the International Telecommunication Union meets in Geneva in November.
Leap seconds pose a problem for the clocks in the internet and GPS devices, which don鈥檛 automatically take them into account. Any extra time must be added manually. And they can complicate space navigation. 鈥淭he European Space Agency doesn鈥檛 launch rockets in months when leap seconds are to be inserted, because they can鈥檛 be certain of the effect on navigation systems if the process doesn鈥檛 go smoothly,鈥� says Nelson. Divorcing clock time from astronomically derived time could solve the problem.
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鈥淓liminating leap seconds could create havoc for some satellite operators鈥�
But eliminating leap seconds could create havoc for physicists and some satellite operators who use the position of the Earth relative to the sun in their calculations, says Mike Hapgood of the UK鈥檚 Royal Astronomical Society. 鈥淭his will affect everyone,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t shouldn鈥檛 be decided by a few people in a closed room in Geneva.鈥�
