2008 Will Be an Extra-long YearShow Video Details ↓ John Belwat: 2008 is ending as the longest year in some time. First we got an added day because of leap year and now New Year's Eve will last a little longer than expected. The final minute of the year will have 61 seconds instead of 60, an adjustment made by the world's time keepers to make up for an anomaly in our clocks. David Rooney: Well time is really important for many reasons, it is not just the time of day, we need that very accurately so that we can go for our trains and get to work on time. But time is embedded in so many technologies of our daily lives now, whether it's mobile phones or electric power transmission or computers. Even satellite navigation in your cars. It all relies on very very accurate time and fractions of a second really matter. John Belwat: A leap second will likely pass unnoticed by everyone celebrating the beginning of 2009, but there remains a debate about how global time is measured. Robert Massey: The bottom line is that using the earth to measure time, although it has worked for millenia, it isn't the most precise time keeper. From the 20th century onwards, we've used atomic clocks, and they give us a much more stable, much more regular time system. John Belwat: There are new proposals to abandon leap seconds in favor of a leap hour, but for tourists preparing to ring in the new year in London, the extra second is an anomaly. Crowd: 3-2-1-1 Happy New Year. John Belwat: Last time there was a leap second was 2005. Leap seconds allow satellites, businesses and high frequency traders to benefit from the accuracy of atomic time while keeping our clocks consistent with the earth's orbit of the sun. John Belwat, the Associated Press. [silence] |