Thanks To Earth Speeding Up, We Could Scrap The Leap Second As Early As Next Month -- And Gain The First Ever "Leap Hour"

IFLS ^ | September 8, 2026 | Dr. Alfredo Carpineti, Edited by Josh Davis

[SunkenCiv]

The solar day is 24 hours long. That's the time it takes the Earth to complete one full rotation on its axis, and as far as humans can tell, this is very accurate. 

However, we live in a world of high-precision machines that deal with the effects of physics that we don't feel. For the machines, a 24-hour day is definitely not exact. Left to their own devices, clocks will slowly go out of sync, which is not exactly ideal. 

Since the 1970s, authorities have been mitigating this by adding a leap second every so often in order to keep atomic clocks and planetary rotation synchronized. This was a quirky little event when June 30 or December 31 might have had the peculiar time of 23:59:60... 

Over the past few billions of years, the Earth's spin has, by and large, been slowing down due to the interaction with the Moon. But this process is not smooth, and there are fluctuations in the spin due to the internal processes of the Earth. This means that since 2015, the Earth has actually been speeding up a bit... 

The International Bureau of Weights and Measures, the group that assesses units of measurement, is meeting just outside Paris next month between October 13 and 15. The leap second was already on the chopping block, and it was expected that the organization was going to scrap it by 2035.

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TOPICS: Astronomy; Business/Economy; Science
KEYWORDS: atomicclock; isostaticrebound; leapsecond; momentofinertia; themoon

[SunkenCiv]

Do not worry, you'd be long dead before we need to use the leap hour.

Image Credit: Peyker/Shutterstock.com

[SunkenCiv]

• from the FRChives: In the shadow of the Moon [08/31/2004]

[packagingguy]

So will the ert eventually spin so fast we will all be thrown into space?

[SunkenCiv]

No, but Guam will tip right over...

[Scrambler Bob]

I looked at a sundial in a ghost town yesterday.

It was about 5 minutes fast.

[SunkenCiv]

🌞

[Repeal The 17th]

I will try to use this an an excuse to my wife
as to why I never seem get any thing done.
“because the days are shorter, I’ll say”
-
I’ll let you know how that works out ...

[DennisR]

Is that you, Hank? 🙄

[Karl Spooner]

We are just catching up to what we lost here. Image may be really slow to load from Postimages tonight.

[sgt_lau]

Tempus fugit.

[dayglored]

Chamber Brothers "Time (Has Come Today)":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQSjV4DZ-Gg

[Nachoman]

This means that since 2015, the Earth has actually been speeding up a bit...

No wonder I've been so dizzy.

[dayglored]

> Chamber Brothers "Time (Has Come Today)"

Oh, and BTW...

"More Cowbell!!"

[dfwgator]

[Laslo Fripp]

Is that you, Gracie?

[no-to-illegals]

Predictably being normal (if normal is undefined) morphed?

[week 71]

-No, but Guam will tip right over...-

Chuckling out loud!

[Tymesup]

I wonder if anyone has blamed Trump for this? No low hanging fruit at Democratic Underground, anyway.

[SaveFerris]

Wait a second...

[6ppc]

LOL!
You know that getting extra time to complete assignments is part of the Michigan IEP. (Individual Education Program)