No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026

Posted by ChrisArchitect 4 hours ago

No leap second will be introduced at the end of December 2026(datacenter.iers.org)

152 points | 111 commentspage 2

Surac 2 hours ago|

World will end at 26 December so no leap second needed

Wingy 4 hours ago||

Does this mean the negative leap second isn't happening anymore?

linux2647 4 hours ago||

Not anymore forever. We’re just not adding one for this year. We might need one next year, we might not. It all depends on the Earth’s rotation and orbit

NooneAtAll3 3 hours ago|||

and Earth's rotation was too fast for last several years

we were all waiting for the negative leap second to finally happen - but cowards got too afraid

deathanatos 1 hour ago||

I don't think it's cowardice, is it? The graph at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second seems to indicate that adding a negative leap second at this point in time would be improper. (We're ~+0.1s off, and a negative leap second would occur if the line was approaching +0.6s. I'd like one too just for the curiosity of the thing, but … the Earth isn't having it.)

tedd4u 3 hours ago||

There's an opportunity to insert or remove a leap second twice a year. They only decide about 6 months in advance of each opportunity what to do (leap second, skipped second, or do nothing).

clircle 2 hours ago||

Cool, I don't have to set my clocks back this December.

dodoisdodo 3 hours ago||

The real Time Variance Authority

ComputerGuru 2 hours ago||

This announcement is very much a nothing burger; it’s already been more or less decided that adding leap seconds just isn’t going to be a thing anymore (in our lifetime). Here’s on article from 2022: https://www.timeanddate.com/news/astronomy/end-of-leap-secon...

ChrisArchitect 4 hours ago||

Notice they only said leap second.

Meanwhile....

International timekeepers to vote on changing the leap second to a leap hour

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/international-tim... (https://archive.ph/GnQUj https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48842329)

_joel 4 hours ago|

really, my I just don't have the time to keep up with this.

icepush 4 hours ago|||

We can change that!

tialaramex 3 hours ago|||

A leap hour wouldn't affect you.

In practice it will never affect anyone because it's a legal fiction, but even if you pretend to believe we would actually introduce this "leap hour" it would be in the distant future long after we're all dead and if there are still humans who have any idea the year 2026 happened they're not sure which of Donald Trump, Taylor Swift, Tony Stark and John McClane were real people.

Edited to add:

This is such a ridiculously long time frame that they might not be sure whether we were worried about climate change, for them that's either a disaster they survived (and maybe most didn't) or it's a weird blip in their historical charts which they struggle to explain. Did our civilisation do something very, very stupid? There is a flammable gas deep underground, did we set fire to it because we were crazy? Why the hell would we have done that? There are signs we deliberately set fire to the coal which is a toxic rock also found underground? That would explain the global climate going nuts. Maybe it was a ritual or something. Ancient people are mad.

Epa095 3 hours ago||

Up until now we have added 1 leap second every 2 year (27 leap seconds since 1972). So if it continues like this, in 7200 years it would be 1 whole hour, and in "only" 3602 years it will be closer to the next hour than the previous (so a natural time to add the leap hour).