George Brown
By George Brown

If you’re thinking of flying somewhere this summer you might want to avoid scheduling a red-eye flight on the night of June 30. The reason? That’s the night a leap second will be added to international atomic clocks all around the world. The purpose is to keep our clocks, and presumably our biological clocks, in sync with the natural rotation of the earth. The problem is this. Even though you can’t feel it (although on occasion I think I can), the earth is slowly slowing down. Very slowly to be sure, but enough to cause timekeeping experts to be concerned.

Before considering their concerns, lets me explain how this vital moment in time will be added to our lives on June 30. Just as a 24 hour leap day is added to the calendar at the end of February every four years, at the stroke of midnight on June 30, 2015, a leap second will be added. Thus, instead of having 86,400 seconds on June 30, we will have 86,401. The IERS (International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service) tells us that adding a leap second will keep our clocks running on time, but, and a big but it is, doing so could also cause major disruptions to our lives.

For example, Demetrios Matsakis, chief scientist for Time Service at the U.S. Naval Observatory, had this to say. “I would not want to be on board a plane during a leap second. The extra second has been known to interrupt GPS receivers, which could be a problem for pilots.”

Matsakis admits to being a little over-cautious, but his concern does underscore the magnitude of the problem. Computers are designed to operate on a 24 hour day that is comprised of 86,400 seconds (not 86,401). Adding an extra second could temporarily confuse their complex finely tuned nanosecond algorithms. The result could be a catastrophic technological collapse of computer systems across the globe, thereby disrupting our lives in unimaginable ways – ways it should be noted that could be far worse even than the failure of airline GPS receivers. For example (and I hesitate to put this into words), what if we had to go for a whole hour, or even a whole day, without being able to log onto Facebook to see the foody pictures our friends have posted, and to read the inspirational quotes, and political rants they have shared – to say nothing of posting our own; and all this because a group of geeky timekeeping nerds are OC about keeping our clocks and lives in sync with the earth’s rotation?

As it turns out, this is not the first time this has happened. The leap second that will be added on June 30 will be the 26th such second to be added since 1972. I can understand adding a day to the month February every four years to keep pace with the earth’s annual glide around the sun, but do we really have to add a tiny little second to our clocks every couple of years just because the earth is, we are told, slowing down?

I thought of taking to Facebook and Twitter with a petition to stop this nonsense, but I doubt such an effort would succeed. A simpler, though impractical, solution would be to flip the switches off on every computer system throughout the world at 11:59:59 on June 30, then flip them all back on at 12:00:01 on July 1. Happily, the computers would sleep for a brief moment then resume their 86,400 seconds per day operation with no disruption to airline GPS receivers, Facebook, or other systems that are vital to maintaining our happiness, peace, and tranquility.

But like I said, though simple, this solution is not practical so I have another plan. Instead of adding a second to the calendar every couple of years, let’s let these leap seconds accumulate until we have enough to create a leap hour (3,600 seconds), and then add the leap hour. I estimate this would not be needed until approximately 2056 (a special note to mathematics and physicist readers – feel free to challenge my calculations and submit your findings via a letter to the editor. I’ll be glad to print a correction, if I agree.) I’m sure that by the year 2056 a yet to be born computer wiz kid will discover a solution to this leap second dilemma. In the meantime, remember to set your clocks forward one second at midnight on June 30.