Wait a second. The start of next
year will be delayed by circumstances beyond everyone's control. Time will
stand still for one second on New Year's Eve, as we ring in the New Year on
that Wednesday night. As a result, you'll have an extra second to celebrate
because a "Leap Second" will be added to 2008 to let a lagging Earth
catch up to super-accurate clocks.
By international agreement, the
world's timekeepers, in order to keep their official atomic
clocks in step with the world's
irregular but gradually slowing rotation, have decreed that a Leap
Second be inserted between 2008 and 2009.
So at precisely 23:59:60 at
Greenwich, England, on New Year's Eve, there will be a one-second void before
the onset of midnight and the start of the New Year. Wednesday will see the
24th Leap Second that has been needed since the practice was initiated in 1972,
and will be the first in three years.
clipped from: www.space.com