Feeling Old?

10 November 2005

Not to worry, it's official... you're younger than you feel! In fact, you are presently up to 32 seconds younger than your body has actually aged. Unfortunately of course, the alternative view of the same fact is that your body is up to 32 seconds older than clocks would have you believe.

How come? Well, it's all down to the practice of periodically adding "leap seconds" to our national timescales as explained in our earlier article:

• Earth Still Stable

Although these steps can be positive or negative in order to achieve the objective, the fact is that only positive leap seconds have been used since their introduction in 1972. That's because (contrary to the way most people perceive the pace of life today) the Earth is slowing down, at least as far as its rotation is concerned. As illustrated in the chart, the timescales by which we live our daily lives (such as Central European Time or Pacific Standard Time in the USA) now lag behind atomic time by 32 seconds.

The last leap second found necessary was introduced at the end of 1998 so, based on the preceding twenty five years, the Earth has recently been enjoying a period of timekeeping stability. However, the International Earth Rotation Service has decided that another leap second will be added at 23:59:59 Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) on the forthcoming December 31^st. Here's what will happen, showing that in the final minute of 2005 there will be 61 seconds:

The impact is that your clocks and watches will suddenly gain one second with respect to your country's national time and will need to be reset if you need this degree of accuracy. Time itself will appear to have stood still meaning that you are officially now 33 seconds younger than the actual maturity of your physical being!