On June 30 2015 at 23:59:59 UTC (19:59:59 EDT), artist Sara Morawetz was standing in the middle of New York’s Times Square with a pair of cymbals. As the clock ticked to the next second, she struck the cymbals together.

This simple performance, titled 61/60, sought to highlight the strange blip of time where the clock read 23:59:60 UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), instead of 00:00:00 UTC.

Since 1972, extra seconds, known as leap seconds, have been added to clock time whenever our slightly wobbly Earth falls out of sync with atomic clocks (which run more consistently). A total of 27 leap seconds have been added in those five decades.

They are therefore important in fields like astronomy because they keep the link between clock time and solar time – which is based on our planet’s movement.

But on Thursday 15 October, delegates at the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) in Versailles, France, voted to abolish them, starting from 2027.

Their loss might seem trivial to some people. But in the field of precision timekeeping, leap seconds are highly controversial. They have the potential to affect everything from financial trading, telecommunications and the energy sector to data centres and the legal system.

In fact, they have threatened to interrupt any sector that requires accurate timing. For example, data centres use time synchronisation to ensure distributed servers work together effectively. In finance, time stamps ensure orders are carried out accurately and provide an audit trail for complying with........

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