Time Change: What is Last Second?
Planet Earth is about to lose a second for the first time in history, and while that might not seem like much, it's pretty significant.
Scientists believe that the Earth's rotation is actually speeding up, ie We need to take a second off our clock.
Basically, it means Earth does not need 24 hours to rotate. The change hasn't happened yet, but it's expected to happen in the near future.
By now, we're all used to turning our clocks back and forth (which will happen tonight). As we change our clocks to make better use of natural daylight, losing a second of time is completely unexpected.
Basically it means The last minute before midnight has 59 instead of 60 seconds. In other words, the time will not be 23.59.59, which is very impressive.
Of course, much of our daily lives depend on time, as do the technologies we use and financial markets around the world. But since Earth's rotation is not completely stationary, it can take a second for them to realign.
“This is an unprecedented situation and a big case,” Dsaid Duncan Agnew, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. Agnew said it “doesn't spell disaster,” but it's a significant event.
“It's not a big change in the Earth's cycle that's going to lead to some kind of cataclysm or anything, but it's something significant. It's another sign that we're in a very unusual time,” he added.
