Desi Nuts

Those eager to put 2008 behind them will have to hold their good-byes for just a moment this New Year`s Eve.

The world`s official timekeepers have added a “leap second” to the last day of the year on Wednesday, to help match clocks to the Earth`s slowing spin on its axis, which takes place at ever-changing rates affected by tides and other factors.

The US Naval Observatory, keeper of the Pentagon`s master clock, said it would add the extra second on Wednesday in coordination with the world`s atomic clocks at 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC.

That corresponds to 6:59:59 p.m. EST (23:59:59 GMT), when an extra second will tick by — the 24th to be added to UTC since 1972, when the practice began.

UTC is the time scale kept by highly precise atomic clocks around the world, accurate to about a billionth of a second per day, the Naval Observatory says. For those with a need for precision timing, it has replaced Greenwich Mean Time, or GMT.

The decision to add or remove a second is the responsibility of the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service, based on its monitoring of the Earth`s rotation.

The goal is to make sure clocks vary from the Earth`s rotational time by no more than 0.9 seconds before an adjustment. That keeps UTC in sync with the position of the sun above the Earth.

Mechanisms such as the Internet-based Network Time Protocol and the satellite-based Global Positioning System depend on precision timing.

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