this post was submitted on 15 Oct 2026
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Today an international group of scientists, diplomats, and timekeepers voted to end the leap second, which has been keeping Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) aligned with the time according to Earth’s rotation (UT1) within one second of difference.

A new system, called the “leap hour,” will allow the Earth’s rotation and official time to fall out of alignment by a full hour

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[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 70 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (6 children)

Yes, you're reading this right. In a 50-100 years the difference between UTC and UT1 will grow to one minute. In about 6000 years it can be even one hour and we will have to change our schedules.

[–] FreeBooteR69@lemmy.ca 47 points 1 week ago (1 children)

They never give us enough time, you know?

[–] popekingjoe@lemmy.world 14 points 1 week ago

At least we'll get an extra hour here in several thousand years.

[–] clgoh@lemmy.ca 24 points 1 week ago

The year 8k problem.

[–] schwifty_squanch@lemmy.ml 23 points 1 week ago

Remember to future-proof your code against the year 8027 problem.

[–] victorz@lemmy.world 20 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I feel like the "problem" here is that we won't remember to do this in 6000 years, and the habit of doing it each leap second keeps us maintaining time, whereas the leap hour will just fall into forgotten history.

So essentially I feel like with this announcement, scientist are basically saying "balls to this, we're done here".

[–] madmantis24@lemmy.wtf 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Maybe we should build a scary-looking shrine with pictograms to remind our descendants of the issue and warn them to keep track

Our descendants: Makes a religion around it or studies it as an unexplainable artifact

[–] ThatGuy46475@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago

So in 144000 years we either skip a leap year or don’t skip one we usually would, whichever it is

[–] homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

It says “more than 1,000 years”, how’d you get 6,000?

[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 5 points 1 week ago

1 minute every ~100 years, 60 minutes in an hour. Why 1000? 🤷