It's time to abandon the leap second.
The members of the international treaty governing science and measurement standards voted on Friday. The near-unanimous vote on Resolution D was met with relief and joy from the world's metrologists, who have been pressing for a solution to the leap second problem for decades.
The director of the time department of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, known as B.I.P.M. from its French name, wrote in a message after the vote that it was unbelievable. It has been more than two decades of discussion and now a great agreement. She said that she was moving to tears.
The US supported the resolution. Elizabeth Donley is the chief of the time and Frequency division of the NIST in Boulder, Colo. I would like to be there. A lot of people celebrate being done in style.
Since its inception, the leap second has caused problems. The idea was to align the international atomic time scale with the slightly slower time that Earth keeps as it rotates. When atomic time is one second ahead, it stops for a second to let Earth catch up. The fudge was put into the atomic time scale. More than twenty-seven have been added.
In 1972 it was difficult to insert those extra seconds. It's hard to know when the next leap second will be needed, so computing networks can't prepare. Different networks have their own ways of using the extra second.
Modern global computing systems have become more intertwined and reliant on hyper-precise timing. The systems that are responsible for telecommunication networks, energy transmission, financial transactions and other vital enterprises are at increased risk of crashing if the extra second is added.
Eliminating the leap second is seen as a way to preserve adherence to U.T.C.
Judah Levine, a physicist at NIST, said the most important issue is the preservation of time as an international quantity. He said the Versailles decision was an amazing step forward.
Russia did not vote in favor of the resolution. Russia has long sought to delay abandonment of the leap second due to the fact that its GLONASS global navigation satellite system is different from other systems. Although it could happen sooner, the leap second is not going to be dropped until the year 2035.
Resolution D calls for U.T.C. to go without interruption until at least 2135 and for metrologists to figure out how to reconcile the atomic and astronomy time scales. For generations to come, the international time standard would be removed from time.
The vice director of the Vatican Observatory Research Group in Tucson, Ariz., said it was important to rejoin the two time scales. He said that scientists had a responsibility to help people feel in control of their lives because the world was becoming incomprehensible.
Sensitivity to this distrust of elites, distrust of experts, distrust of science and institutions is a real problem in today's world. Let's not make a contribution to it.
The elimination of the leap second is still being done. The I.T.U. is responsible for the transmission of time. Next year, the I.T.U.'s World Radiocommunication Conference will vote on the topic. The former director of the time department at B.I.P.M. believes that the I.T.U. will support the Versailles vote.
She applauded the vote on Friday, saying that it's closer to have continuous time. We've been dreaming about this for a long time.
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