Entertainment

Mark June 30 in your calendars: Your computer and internet could crash

Jun 21, 2015

It’s only 9 days away but it’s time now to think about what will happen on June 30 that will affect the world as we know it.

On Tuesday the 30th of June, at precisely 23:59:59 GMT (actually 09:59:59am on the 1st of July here), the world’s clocks will add a second to the day, making it 24 hours and one second long.

So why is this happening and what will it do? Does it even matter?

Well yes, it does matter, and it needs to be done. We all know a standard year is 365 days long, but in actuality the Earth makes its journey around the sun in about 365.25 days. This means that, over time, the calendar will start to get out of sync with the sun.

We have leap years every 4 years to make up for this and the leap second works on a similar formula. Let’s just say it’s a bit tricky to explain but scientists have confirmed that June 30 is the right time to do it.

This variation of one second doesn’t mean much in everyday life and we probably could go without noticing, but we need extremely precise timing in our world to ensure our navigation, astronomy, mobile phones, satellites, the internet, submarines, and a huge number of other systems work correctly.

According to Gizmag, there have been 26 leap seconds since January 1, 1972. Instead of regular intervals, leap seconds have since 1999 been set at intervals of 7, 3, 3.5, and 3 years.

During a leap second, clocks and watches showing legal time must sync with a new time signal or stop for one second.

Experts believe it could send the internet world into a panic, as it did in 2012. Problems arose when subsystems got confused by the time change and caused hyperactivity on certain servers.

But time will tell as to what actually happens as companies scramble to implement ways to accommodate this tiny moment in time.

Share your thoughts below.

Entertainment The latest news Tech Lifestyle