[First_Salute]

3 thousandths faster --- how does that affect the leap year thing?

[wagglebee]

If we lose 3 microseconds a day (and from the article it sounds like this may just be a "one time" event) in 28,800,000 days (78,904+ years) we will have lost a day. I'm not going to change my schedule over it.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Three millionths shorter. We get leap seconds because of the secular deceleration of the earth's rotation. If the earth's rate of rotation slows by 0.002 seconds per day per century, at the end of 20th century, we would expect to lose one second every 18 months. To keep time reckoned by the earth's orientation (celestial time) synchronized with atomic time standards officials in France decide to add or subtract a second from UTC from time to time.

As days get longer, we will need fewer leap years (intercalary days) to keep the calendar aligned with the seasons. At 0.002 sec per day per century, it would take about 5,000 years to loose one complete day, which about as long accuracy of the Gregorian Calendar, so it should not effect leap years in our lifetime.