What if timekeepers do away with leap second?

The International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM-Le Bureau Internationale Poid et Mesure) meets tomorrow (November 18) at its headquarters in Versailles, France, to vote on various things.

- DEVANGSHU DATTA

One of these involves the future of the "leap second": Will international timekeepers continue to add a second every so often to adjust for natural variations in the Earth's rotation and revolution? Many of the world's largest digital businesses and several government bodies wish to abandon this practice. This decision, one way or another, will actually make a difference to ordinary citizens.

What is a second?

The basic unit of time, the second, was redefined in 1967. Until then, it was defined in terms of the day with 86,400 seconds (24 hours x 60 minutes x 60 seconds) per day. A day, however, is hard to measure precisely. While we understand a day intuitively as one rotation period, the Earth does not rotate at perfectly uniform speed.