China to gain an extra second
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E-mail Shanghai, March 19, 2012
People in China will gain an extra second at 7:59:59am on July 1, the country's time service authority announced over the weekend, to keep official time in line with the Earth.
A leap second will occur after 7:59:59am Beijing time across the world before it's 8am, according to the Coordinated Universal Time, the National Time Service Center said.
The time on computers and mobile phones can be adjusted automatically as the center will send signals to all the electronic terminals to adjust the time, while the stock exchanges and financial institutes will also add a second automatically.
"The leap second will have no impact on our daily lives," said Dong Shaowu, director of the time frequency reference laboratory office of the center affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Leap seconds can prevent atomic clocks from speeding ahead of solar time. They were introduced in 1972 to keep modern timekeepers - atomic clocks, which rely on the vibrations in atoms to provide a very accurate measurement of time - in line with the Earth.
Sometimes a leap second is added every year, sometimes not for several, with six-month's notice provided before action needs to be taken. There have been 24 leap seconds added to time. The previous one was on December 30, 2008.
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