Earth Owes Your Business a Second Each Year!

They say time and tide waits for none, but that’s about to change!

For the first time, the Earth is gaining speed rather than losing it. The result? Days are becoming shorter, leaving our clocks in a perpetual game of catch-up.

However, the increasing speed of Earth’s rotation continues to elude rationalisation.

Some attribute it to the rapid melting of ice at the poles, altering the planet’s distribution of mass. Others point to the complexities within Earth’s molten core or heightened seismic activity. Deviations in the Earth’s axis of rotation could also play a role, alongside the gravitational pull exerted by the moon. 

Earth completes one rotation in about 24 hours, and the key word here is about.

From 1972, international timekeepers decided to add a “leap second” in June or December for astronomical time to catch up to the atomic time, called Coordinated Universal Time or UTC.

We have positive leap seconds every couple of years, and because they are made public well in advance, anyone who needs to know has plenty of time to react.

Come 31st March 2024, a negative leap second would go from 23:59:58 seconds directly to midnight, skipping 23:59:59!

While you might think, “So what’s a fraction of a second?”—believe me, when it comes to the intricacies of global trade, every tick matters.