World's timekeepers will vote to ditch 'leap second' this week

Key points

• Global timekeepers will vote this week on whether to abandon the leap second, a small clock adjustment added 27 times since 1972. The governing body of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures meets from 12 to 15 October.
• The leading proposal would let official time drift until it is an hour out of sync with Earth's rotation, then add a leap hour.
• Experts say leap seconds have caused software to crash and that Earth's rotation is currently slowing, so the change would not be needed for over a millennium.