The organization in charge of maintaining world timekeeping announced that scientists and government officials decided to stop using leap seconds by the year 2035 at a summit in France on Friday.
Similar to leap years, leap seconds have been regularly added to clocks during the past 50 years to adjust for the difference between precise atomic time and the Earth’s slower rotation.
The International Bureau of Weights and Measures has been having trouble with UTC
While most people don’t notice leap seconds, they can be problematic for a number of systems that depend on a precise, uninterrupted flow of time, including satellite navigation, software, telephony, trade, and even space flight.
The International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) has been having trouble with Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the internationally accepted standard by which the world sets its clocks.
BIPM member states and other parties agreed to stop adding leap seconds
At the General Conference on Weights and Measures, held typically every four years at the Versailles Palace west of Paris, the 59 BIPM member states and other parties agreed to stop adding leap seconds by 2035.
Patrizia Tavella, head of BIPM’s time division, referred to the decision as “historic” because it would allow for “a continuous flow of seconds without the discontinuities currently caused by irregular leap seconds.”