The addition of a single second can screw up half of the Internet

All of the atomic clocks in the world will pause for a single second on the midnight between June 30th and July 1st later this year in order to synchronize with the Earth’s rotational time. While adding a leap second definitely isn’t something new, past occurrences have caused some serious issues with various websites and services on the Internet. 

Officials at the International Earth Rotation Service have announced that a leap second will be added to the year this summer to allow for syncing up atomic clock time with the Earth’s rotational time. The announcement has made many Internet sites nervous, as adding leap seconds in the past has caused problems with services such as Foursquare, Reddit, Linkedln and Yelp—all reported incidents due to the sudden time discrepancy the last time a leap second was added back in 2012. The advent of computers and the Internet has caused a need for ever more precise time measurement and scientists have responded—atomic clocks are the standard now with accuracy up to quadrillionths of a second.