World spinning slower: 2015 will be one second longer after 'leap second' added

Scientists at the International Earth Rotation services fear that the ‘leap second’ added at midday on June 30 could spark Internet crashes.

15:29 07 January 2015

2015 will be one second longer because the Earth is turning slower by around two thousandths of a second per day.

It is feared that the “leap second”, which will be added on June 30, might spark internet crashes. The same event took place in 2012 where Mozilla, Reddit, Linkedln, and numerous other sites crashed.

Nick Stamatakos, from the US Naval Observatory, said: “Atomic clocks add an extra second. So the day of June 30 will have 86,401 seconds, instead of 86,400 seconds.

"The length of the day for you and I and everyone on the Earth will have an extra second.”

To avoid any problem, Google developed a “leap smear” technique where it gradually adds milliseconds to its system clocks prior to the official arrival of the leap second.

The first leap second first occurred in 1972 and this year will be the 26th time in history it has been added to clocks.

While America wanted to get rid of the leap seconds, Britain said that doing so could prove problematic for Greenwich Mean Time, which was adopted in 1847 and is measured by the moment the Sun crosses the Greenwich Meridian.