earlier replies
It spins too slowly, it spins at irregular rates, it is constantly slowing down, and it can never be wound
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Vibrating caesium atoms are much more reliable, and that's where we derive atomic time from
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Unfortunately, for the purposes of civil timekeeping, the rotation of the Earth is all that matters, and nobody cares about caesium atoms
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UTC is the compromise which gives us atomically accurate civil time while also actually tracking the solar day properly
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Be honest, you probably don't need to care about leap seconds
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Anyway, the extra second at the end of 2016 is likely to be one of 2016's better seconds
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Note: the leap second happens at 23:59:60 UTC, no matter where you are. In the US, that's mid-to-early evening
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In Australia, the leap second will be something like 10:59:60am on 1 January 2017
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In Bangalore, the leap second is at 5:29:60am. In Kathmandu, it's at 5:44:60am
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Thankfully, there are no time zones which aren't offset from UTC by a whole number of minutes. Anymore en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTC%E2…

UTC−00:25:21 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org
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Replying to @qntm
@domenic Try fractional seconds:. GMT +0h 19m 32.13s en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTC%2B… based on tower of Amsterdam's Westerkerk

UTC+00:20 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Nov 17, 2016 · 9:36 PM UTC
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