Read the latest positive news, breakthroughs, and inspiring stories about timekeeping, curated daily by BrightWire.
Global timekeepers voted to scrap leap seconds starting May 2027, ending a 55-year practice that's been causing headaches for computers and digital systems. The move will make international timekeeping simpler and more reliable for our increasingly connected world.
International timekeepers are considering replacing problematic leap seconds with a once-every-century leap hour, solving a decades-old headache for GPS, banking, and communications systems worldwide. The innovative fix could prevent computer crashes while giving Earth's spin room to wiggle.
Two teams of physicists have built the world's first nuclear clocks, devices that could someday be more precise and portable than today's best timekeepers. After more than 20 years of work, these revolutionary clocks use energy changes in atomic nuclei instead of electrons to measure time.