Tech giants are racing against the clock. No, in this case they are not competing with each other to bring an innovative tool to the market. In fact, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta have joined forces to try to do away with the leap second, adding an extra second to world clocks to synchronize them with the Earth’s rotation.
For services that depend on the Internet like timers, schedules, databases according to big techs, this increase in time can generate errors (bugs), crash websites, break systems, among other things. This happens because the machines cannot decrypt this account.
Along with tech companies, government agencies the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the US and the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) in France argue that adding that second is useless. Furthermore, the speed of rotation of the Earth has not changed much over the years, which might justify their necessity.
“Introducing new leap seconds is a risky practice that does more harm than good, and we believe it’s time to introduce new technologies to replace them,” said Oleg Obleukhov, product engineer at Meta, and scientific researcher Ahmad Byagowi, who works at the company blog on Monday (25).
Why did the leap second come about?
Many years ago it was agreed that the day on earth is determined by the rotation of the globe on its own axis and its orbit around the sun. It’s what they call a sunny day.
Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) was created to set and measure time. He rules the clocks of the world. Our concept of time on Earth or spacetime is a fraction of a solar day (an hour, for example, is a fraction of a solar day).
But historically, the Earth’s rotation speed is not as accurate as clock numbers. The process can be sped up or slowed down depending on a number of factors. Therefore, the solar time and the coordinated universal time of the clocks create a difference over the months.
For example, on July 19, 2020, the planet completed its rotation 1.4602 milliseconds faster than the usual 86,400 seconds (24 hours).
And to compensate for this difference, the leap second (also called extra second or leap second) is used. Since 1972, when it began operation, timekeeping authorities have added an extra second to the global clock, known as International Atomic Time (IAT), 27 times.
Instead of 23:59:59 changing to 0:0:0 at midnight, an additional 23:59:60 is inserted. This update is usually made on June 30th or December 31st.
This process confuses computers. They work with the idea of 24 hours a day, 60 minutes in an hour and 60 seconds in a minute, summarizes website The Verge.
Disputes are not new
At least since 2012, the fight against the leap second has won more arguments. This year, crashes have been recorded in services such as the Mozilla internet browser and the LinkedIn, Yelp, Amadeus and Reddit platforms.
In 2017, online security company Cloudflare added the second affected software, leaving some customers offline. Earlier this year, some websites were also affected.
For metapros, time adjustment is “primarily useful for scientists and astronomers,” but should be replaced given the chaos it entails.
“We predict that if we stick to IAT (International Atomic Time) without observing a leap second, we should be good for at least 2,000 years,” said Ahmad Byagowi. He thought that without this addition, the day on earth would not, in practice, get out of sync with the sun.
“Perhaps we need to think about a correction at this point,” the scientist continued. Despite the suggestion, the duo does not defend a practical strategy that actually replaces the leap second.
Google alternative
For example, Google came up with a temporary solution to solve the problem: the “jump point”. In 2011, they started spreading those extra seconds out over a day.
“We have modified our internal (…) servers so that with each update they gradually add a few milliseconds, which vary in a time window before the leap second actually occurs,” the company explained at the time. So when it came time to add an extra second to midnight, Google clocks already took that into account and shifted the time throughout the day.
universal solution
With US and French government agencies in the chorus of dissatisfaction, big techs want technology more palatable to machines and astronomers to be introduced in the next decade.
The solution is expected to be revealed as early as next year when a report on the subject is published. The document has been commissioned by the UN International Telecommunication Union (United Nations) since 2015.
*With information from The Verge and Cnet.