Good-bye to the leap second. The International Bureau of Weights and Measures has declared that the leap second is about to run out of time. Literally. It could go away as soon as 2027. This small adjustment of clocks has occurred every couple of years to synchronize our earthly time with minor changes in the planet's slightly irregular rotation. Very precise atomic clocks have relied on it and its presence is evident in UTC used by amateur radio, science, satellites, financial institutions and others around the world.

Bureau official Noël Dimarcq announced that reconciling these small seconds with the unpredictable changes in the planet's rotation has become too irregular a process, even raising the unprecedented prospect of introducing a negative leap second in 2029. Three years ago, the demise of leap seconds came up for discussion at the ITU's World Radiocommunications Conference in Dubai. Judah Levine of the National Institute of Standards and Technology proposed introducing "leap minutes" every 50 years or so.

The leap hour, however, seems to be the favored solution in the officials' vote taken October 15th. Dimarcq said the committee for time and frequency believes it is wiser to wait until an extra hour of adjustment accumulates and take the bigger leap then.

Of course, that could take years. It could even take centuries. However long it takes, it most certainly WILL take time.