Earth speeds up, time in danger: why UTC will be detached from the planet

Earth has sped up, time is in danger: why UTC will be detached from the planet

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Scientists are preparing for a historic decision — for the first time in 54 years, world time may permanently lose its connection to Earth's rotation. The cause is the planet's instability and the risk of a global tech sabotage.

🌍 How we measured time in the past

For centuries humanity synchronized clocks with Earth's rotation. The planet turns, and a day lasts 24 hours. But with the advent of atomic clocks it became clear that the natural “mechanism” is imperfect. The speed of rotation is affected by the atmosphere, oceans, and the mixing of liquid iron in

Historical note: In 2012 the addition of a leap second already caused glitches at Reddit, Mozilla, LinkedIn, and the Qantas airline booking system. In 2016 problems arose at the DNS service Cloudflare. And now it concerns a situation that has never been tested.

🏛️ What Versailles will decide

In October 2026, in Versailles (France), the 28th General Conference on Measures and Weights will take place. Fifty‑nine member countries will vote on a resolution that radically changes world time.

Key points of the project:

Abandonment of leap seconds from 20 May 2027;
Increase the permissible discrepancy between atomic time (UTC) and astronomical time from 0.9 seconds to 1 hour;
Instead of a “leap second,” a “leap hour” will be introduced—a correction once per millennium.

Why an hour? Adding or subtracting an hour is a procedure familiar to everyone from daylight‑saving time changes. It is much simpler and safer for IT systems than working with fractions of a second.

📅 What will happen in a thousand years

According to Sethnam Shemar, the discrepancy between UTC and Earth’s rotation will reach one hour no earlier than 1,000 years from now. By then, methods of measuring time may change drastically, and the problem may simply cease to exist.

As Cambridge University computer scientist Marcus Kun noted, “the rarer the event, the stronger the shock it causes,” so many experts would prefer to abandon any adjustments altogether in the future.

🌟 The cultural cost of the issue

The decision that will be taken in October is not only technological but also symbolic. Humanity will, for the first time in its history, officially break the millennia‑long link between time and the planet’s rotation. Sundials, stars, sunrises, and sunsets will no longer dictate official time.

But, as experts note, the safety of critical infrastructure is more important than nostalgia. And if the resolution is adopted, our clocks will forever stop “catching up” with the planet. Time will become atomic—and this may be the beginning of a new era in measuring life.

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Earth speeds up, time in danger: why UTC will be detached from the planet

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