Computer giants are under panic situation as this month will be slightly longer than the most with an extra second called ‘leap second’. Leap seconds are adjustment to the international time that is concerned with the slowing of earth’s rotation. On June 30, the commonly used time standard around the world, coordinated universal time (UTC) will add an extra second to the day at 23:59:60 GMT.

Why do we have a leap second ?

The universe seems constant, but lot of insignificant changes is going on in the background. Such an example is the Earth’s spin, which is slowing down continuously in a rate of 2000ths of a second per day. Which simply means Earth is taking 1 second more than its usual time in every 2000 days. This is causing notable time difference between the constant nuclear clock and computer server clock.

Cyber Problem

By virtue of the time difference several major technological problems are arising, this can wreck havoc the whole internet. Modern computers which sync up with the atomic clock are affected the most. As atomic clock is a constant unit and stays ignorant of these kinds of changes, the computers synced with it recounts the same second twice.

This is an exasperating issue as emails sent after that time period may find wrong bit of servers and end up vanishing without the writer’s concern. Not only the public users, but also the tech giants are harassed due to this additional second.

The last leap second in 2012 meant some websites like Qantas, Reddit, Gawker, Mozilla and LinkedIn were ceased for a while. Flight networks and railway networks were badly affected which caused majority of flights and trains cancelled and some delayed. Several servers working with unitary nuclear clock around the world were affected with troublesome issues.

The world is also concerned about impact to the stock markets; as now trading are occurring in short time even less than a second. The widespread online business arena can be highly impacted if bank’s server gets even a microsecond delayed.

Solution

Google™ accepted it as a major concern as it is causing millions of dollars for the gigantic multinational tech companies to loose. In 2011, a server named ‘Leap Smear’ was invented by Google to confront with these types of obstacles. Under this method it can modify the network time protocol (NTP) of servers used by its internal systems to keep accurate time. It works on a simple mechanism by adding a little bit of time periodically every time the servers were updated replacing the age old concept of sudden time change. With the new concept, before leap second the servers are already getting caught up with the new time.

This year the company’s approach is to smear away leap second during a 20-hour window when international company’s servers will be slowed down roughly by 14 parts per million, Noah Maxwell and his team, Google site’s reliability engineers, wrote in a blog post on May 21. “This problem is accentuated for multi-node distributed systems, because a one-second jump dramatically magnifies time-sync discrepancies between multiple nodes” they wrote. As Google is prepared, the cyber world can hope for a diminished or even nullified property and content loss this year.

History and Views across the Globe

The first ‘leap second’ concept was initiated in 1972. Thereafter, in total 25 extra seconds are included within 50 years, the last one was in 2012. In between 1972-1979, each year had an additional second. Then, the rate of introducing of leap ‘second’ was decreased to save the web from financial crisis from 1979-2012.

It has controversial views in the world. The United States has a clear intention against the Leap second and wants to get rid of it. The reason is clearly disruption of cyber world. But along with some European countries, Britain is in support of this extra second. Because the end of it stands for the end of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) vastly used in Europe and African countries which is conducted by the help of sun measurement.

“The value of a second is not negotiable!”