Today is the longest day of the year – The Times

Ed. Print HAVE A SECOND MORE

Today is the longest day of the year. – Efe

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The next June 30 will have a second to compensate for slight variations in the duration of day that they accumulate and produce a lag between the time when the clocks and the rotation period of the Earth are based.

This was decided by the International Earth Rotation Service, based in Paris in a bulletin released earlier this year, Francisco Colomer, the National Astronomical Observatory (NAO) said.

In particular, Colomer explained, the last minute of June 30 will have 61 seconds.

The need of inserting an extra second is that tiny variations in day length accumulate because the Earth is not a rigid body, its rotation is affected by the coupling of core liquid mantle, oceans, atmosphere.

These accumulations produce a gap between the Coordinated Universal Time, which is the atomic time when it comes to our watches is based, and time bound to the Earth’s rotation, which draws on the Sun’s position, explained

The invention of atomic clocks measure time allowed for more accurate and in 1970 an international agreement recognized the existence of the two timescales:. the planet’s rotation period and the so-called Coordinated Universal Time or UTC. Service International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Jump is the organization that looks at the difference between the two scales and notes must be inserted or removed when one second of UTC.

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