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Transcript

1. The world just voted to stop fixing its clocks with extra seconds.
2. The reason? Earth is spinning faster, and we might have to delete a second.
3. Our time runs on two clocks: atomic clocks, and Earth's spin.
4. Atomic clocks tick perfectly steady. Earth's spin wobbles a little.
5. For decades, Earth ran slow, so we added a second to let it catch up.
6. That's a leap second. Since 1972, we've added 27.
7. And that one second crashed websites and delayed flights back in 2012.
8. But lately, Earth has been spinning a bit faster. One researcher points to its liquid core.
9. Keep going, and one day we'd have to remove a second. That's never been done.
10. Software is built to add time, not take it away. Engineers call it a mini Y2K.
11. So starting in 2027, no more leap seconds. Instead of fixing every second, we let the gap build up.
12. For that gap to reach a full hour takes centuries. Our clocks just stopped chasing the Earth.

Sources

1. Scientific American (Yahoo News 재게재), Emma Gometz, "Scientists vote to end leap seconds, redefining how the world keeps time" (2026-10-15)
2. Yahoo News UK, "Global timekeeping rules change: leap second scrapped from 2027" (2026-10)
3. BIPM, "Resolution 5 of the 28th CGPM (2026)" — 연속 UTC 2027-05-20 시행, |UT1-UTC| 최대 3,600초, 수백 년 지속
4. AP via PBS NewsHour, "Timekeepers may subtract a second from clocks as soon as 2029 as planet spins slightly faster" (2024-03-27)
5. PCWorld, "Linux is culprit in leap-second lapses, Cassandra exec says" (2012-07)