Time Stops - Literally - On New Year's Eve
Just before the stroke of midnight scientists will delay the start of 2006 by adding a "leap second" to accommodate for changes in the Earth's rotation.
Despite a common belief time it constant, the Earth's rotation rate generally slows down or speeds up throughout the year. Some changes are predictable. The gravitational pull of the moon, for example, is slowing the Earth's rotation by roughly two thousandths of a second for each day per century.
At midnight Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) atomic clocks worldwide will read 23:59:60 before hitting 00:00:00. This year's leap second will add an extra second to atomic clocks at NIST in Boulder, Colo., and other sites around the world. Normally, the last second of the year is 23:59:59 UTC on Dec. 31, 2005, while the first second of the new year being 00:00:00 UTC on Jan. 1, 2006. The leap second added at 23:59:59 UTC (06:59:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time) on Dec. 31, will make the atomic clocks read 23:59:60 UTC before changing to all zeros.
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