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Today will have an extra "leap second" and everyone is freaking out

 
If you’re planning on staying up until midnight tonight, be sure to keep an eye on your clocks. That’s because tonight, right before midnight, an extra second is going to be added to the day. This extra second is called a "leap second" and could potentially crash the internet.
Leap seconds are added to our clocks to give the Earth’s rotation time to catch up. So, every few years, a leap second is added so that our clocks and the Earth are moving at the same speed. The practice began in 1972 and there have been 25 leap seconds since.
 
 
 

This year, however, the leap second is causing some panic. The last time a leap second was added in 2012, things got a little cray cray. Major websites like Mozilla and LinkedIn crashed because their computer systems weren’t prepared for a 61 second minute—but that’s not all. Hundreds of flights in Australia had to be grounded or delayed because their systems crashed—yikes!

And while it might seem like an easy solution to simply drop a leap second all together, it’s not really an option. Without leap seconds, in a few centuries time would be off by an entire hour.

Don’t worry too much, though—experts say it is unlikely that the internet will completely crash. Sites like Google are already taking precautions, so you should be able to go about most of your late-night girlslife.com websurfing with ease!

Have you heard about this #LeapSecond?

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by Katy Herman & Mallory Walker | 2/1/2016
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