The International Earth Rotation Service is calling for a leap second – the 24th of its kind since the first in 1971. I wonder what they did before that?

At midnight GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) on December 31st, the world will stop while a second is added to clocks everywhere.

The Earth rotates at different speeds in different years. The moon’s gravity supposedly has something to do with this. IERS uses calculations from more than 200 atomic clocks which base their time measurements on atomic resonance frequency.

Timekeepers warn that refusing to coordinate clocks might lead to lapse or collapse in communication, aerospace, finance and transportation. Remember Y2K!

Atomic time was introduced in 1958. Since then the Earth’s rotation has gained 33 seconds. I wonder, how did we and the animals get along before we had atomic time to tell us we were all off?

When I was in the Navy, we learned that the most reliable, predicatable and accurate measurements for navigation and time were the stars. Seems like we can’t be the Creator’s doing no matter how hard we try.

What are you going to do with your extra second?