A close-up photo of Big Ben in London
An international coalition of scientists and government agencies have voted to retire the dated timekeeping system, which will officially end in 2035. The decision was made on 18 November 2022 during a general conference in France held by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), the organisation responsible for global timekeeping. Similar to leap years, leap seconds are a measure of time added periodically to clocks to make up for the difference between astronomical time, or Earth’s rotation, and Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which is based on the atomic clock. “As Earth’s rotation continues to slow down, it accumulates one minute of delay each century and one hour of delay over 5,000 years,” said Patrizia Tavella, director of BIPM’s time department. Thus, the leap second was invented.