The world's official timekeepers have voted to replace the leap second with a leap hour, following decades of discussion. Delegates from 69 countries cast their votes on Thursday at a conference in France, organised by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures.
The move is intended to mitigate the risk of computer systems and other technical infrastructure experiencing problems when software encounters minutes that are not exactly 60 seconds long. Dr Setnam Shemar, a principal scientist at the UK's National Physical Laboratory, stated that this change will reduce risks to systems and national infrastructure that rely on accurate time, while maintaining the link between global time and Earth's rotation.
This decision means that Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) can diverge by up to an hour from astronomical time before a leap hour would be required. However, such a correction is not anticipated for thousands of years. The concern over a potential negative leap second, which had a 30% probability in the next decade, brought the vote forward. Past positive leap seconds have caused computer systems to freeze and go offline, affecting services like Reddit, LinkedIn, and Qantas flights.