Those people looking to make every second count will have an extra bit of time June 30, courtesy the leap second.
It won’t be much, but a second will be added to the clocks around the world to get them back in sync with the earth’s rotation.
Since 1967, when official time pieces went atomic, human time keeping has been independent of the planet’s rotation. The problem is that rotation is slowing while clocks are not. That means that every few years, a second has to be added to get everything back in sync.
A second has been added to time pieces 25 times since 1972, the last coming in 2012. This year’s addition will be the first time a second has been added during trading hours since markets went electronic.
The second will be added at 5 p.m. on the West Coast. U.S. stock markets are ending some after-hours trading early and others from Sydney to Tokyo are recalibrating their clocks ahead of time.
In one second, 1.4 million order messages are sent to U.S. equity-trading venues and $4.6 million worth of stocks are traded around the world. Nearly $3.7 billion worth of stocks change hands at the bell in Korea, Japan and Australia alone.
In 2012, Qantas Airways Ltd. and Reddit Inc., among others, suffered glitches on their websites due to the added second. There is also the potential to make mischief with law enforcement, voice and data services, utilities and weapons systems as the second is added.
About 10 percent of large-scale computer networks are expected to encounter hiccups due to the leap second.
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