Happy Leap Second!

Some person in authority–I don’t know who, very likely the astronomer royal–has decided that although for such a beastly month as February twenty-eight days as a rule are plenty, one year in every four his days shall be reckoned as nine and twenty.

That’s what we call "Leap Year"–when we get an extra day in the year (making it kind of a misnomer–and yes, I know that it wasn’t the astronomer royal who decided this).

This year, though, we get a leap second.

At 7 p.m. EST (4 p.m. PST), we’ll have an extra second inserted to account for the fact that the earth is slowing down its rotation (but ever so slowly, so we don’t notice).

Have fun with your extra second!

Be sure to party like it’s 1999!

GET THE STORY (WHICH WILL TAKE YOU LONGER THAN A SECOND TO READ).

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

7 thoughts on “Happy Leap Second!”

  1. It’s called a Leap Year because usually, a given date is one weekday after what it was last year — this year, Christmas was a Sunday, which means last year it was a Saturday, and next year it’s a Monday.
    But the year before that it was a Thursday. The leap year made it leap the Friday.
    My last pedantic fact for this year. One hopes. 0:)

  2. Jimmy wrote: “…the earth is slowing down its rotation (but ever so slowly, so we don’t notice).”
    Speak for yourself, Jimmy.

  3. “At 7 p.m. EST (4 p.m. PST), we’ll have an extra second inserted…”
    In the words of Marvin, the Paranoid Android;
    “Oh, not another one…”

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