What are you going to do with your leap second?
- Published
Have you thought about what you're going to do with your extra second?
The slightly odd rotation of the earth means that timekeepers are adding an additional tick to the last minute of the last hour of the last day of June. It's a tricky problem for computer programmers, but it seems many of us are wondering how exactly to use that bonus time.
The hashtag #LeapSecond has been used more than 7,000 times on Twitter in the past 24 hours. Some urged a moment of quiet reflection:
For a less tranquil experience you could, like @AndrewJEwart and @1giantleap, listen to most of "You Suffer" by death metal band Napalm Death - at about 1.3 seconds, it's by several accounts one of the world's shortest songs (although the Guinness World Records people tell BBC Trending it's not a category that they actively monitor).
The team behind the satirical American TV show Last Week Tonight came up with a clever way to spend your extra second - all you have to do is press a button to view a randomly generated video (part of one, anyway).
There were also no shortage of companies, charities and other organisations jumping in on the hashtag, encouraging people to spend their leap second:
- and about a hundred other things.
Some pointed out that the leap second could have hugely important economic ramifications. Greece is scheduled to make a payment of €1.6bn to the International Monetary Fund by the end of the day.
"On the bright side," tweeted Ira Alif Syabil, "#Greece have another second of hope thanks to #leapsecond."
Blog by Mike Wendling
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