Every so often, a leap second or "leap second" is added to our clocks so that GMT time (based on the Earth's rotation) is kept in sync with the standards set by the 400 atomic clocks distributed in 70 laboratories around the world. . Atomic time (which implies that, for the first time, the unit of time, the second, is not linked to an astronomical phenomenon) has the advantage of being much more precise, although it differs by a few fractions of a second from the time marked by the rotation. of the Earth, so to maintain the relationship with the Earth's rotation, this "leap second" is added from time to time. For example, on December 31, 2008, at 11:59 p.m. 59, a positive leap second was inserted in the Coordinated Universal Time scale.
In the short term, the aforementioned difference is negligible, but if the extra second were not added, in 60 years the difference would be one minute ; and in 600 years, an hour. Recently, some members of the International Telecommunication Union have proposed adding one hour to the clock every 600 years and abolishing this leap time. However, after the meeting held in early 2012, the experts have not been able to reach a consensus, so they have called a new meeting in 2015.
