
The organisation in charge of maintaining global timekeeping announced that at a summit in France on Friday, scientists and government leaders decided to do away with leap seconds by the year 2035.
Over the past 50 years, leap seconds have been added to clocks on a regular basis, much like leap years, to account for the discrepancy between exact atomic time and the Earth's slower rotation.
While most people don't notice leap seconds, they can be problematic for a number of systems like satellite navigation, software, telephony, trade, and even space flight that depend on an accurate, uninterrupted flow of time.
The Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the globally recognised standard by which the world sets its clocks, has given the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) a headache.
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The 59 BIPM member states and other parties adopted a resolution to stop adding leap seconds by 2035 during the General Conference on Weights and Measures, which is held generally every four years at the Versailles Palace west of Paris.
The "historic decision," according to the head of BIPM's time division, Patrizia Tavella, would enable "a continuous flow of seconds without the discontinuities currently caused by irregular leap seconds."
(with inputs from agencies)