It’s Official: The Leap Second Will Be Retired (a Decade from Now)
On Friday, an international vote was taken to ditch the leap second, a technical fudge that has caused headaches since its inception 50 years ago....
The time has come — or will come, in 2035 — to abandon the leap second.
So voted the member states of the international treaty governing science and measurement standards, at a meeting in Versailles, France, on Friday. The near unanimous vote on what was known as Resolution D was met with relief and jubilation from the world’s metrologists, some of whom have been pressing for
a solution to the leap second problem for decades.
“Unbelievable,” Patrizia Tavella, director of the time department of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, known as B.I.P.M. from its French name and based outside Paris, wrote in a WhatsApp message shortly after the vote. “More than 20 years of discussion and now a great agreement.” She added that she was “moved to tears.”
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That is a long time to fix a second
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