![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/d41586-026-02669-0_53175474.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
A negative leap second could mean computer systems no longer run like clockwork. Credit: Florian Gaertner\/Photothek\/Getty<\/p>\n
The leap second could be scrapped as soon as October. The periodic adjustment to the world\u2019s clocks, which has been done every few years since 1972, was already set to end by 2035. But authorities are considering an immediate end to avoid the real possibility that the next leap second will be negative \u2014 meaning that clocks must skip, rather than gain, a second. This has never happened before, and comes with unprecedented risk, say researchers.<\/p>\n
To avoid future chaos, the world\u2019s timekeepers are for the first time proposing that the leap second be replaced by a leap hour, which would realign the timescales only once they differed by 3,600 seconds. Member states of the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) will vote on the resolution at their 28th meeting outside Paris on 13\u201315 October.<\/p>\n
An extra second has been slipped into Earth\u2019s official Coordinated Universal Time (utc) 27 times since the 1970s. Each one enables utc, which is maintained using atomic clocks<\/a>, to be aligned with time according to the planet\u2019s naturally varying rotation, which served as the world\u2019s timekeeper for millennia.<\/p>\n But the addition of a leap second \u2014 which last happened in 2016 \u2014 can cause havoc for the computing systems that rely on time synchronization to operate correctly. These include crucial infrastructure such as electrical grids, telecommunications, financial systems and the Internet.<\/p>\n Part of the problem with the current system is that there are several ways in which organizations cope with leap seconds. Tech giant Google, for example, chooses to \u2018smear\u2019 out the extra second gradually throughout the day, whereas other companies opt to add a whole second to a specific minute. Some financial exchanges adjust their trading times to avoid having markets operating during the 61-second minute in which the extra second is added. \u201cWe end up with this discontinuity in a system that\u2019s intended to be continuous,\u201d says Georgette Macdonald, director-general of the Metrology Research Centre in Halifax, Canada.<\/p>\n Negative result<\/p>\n