Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Coordinated Universal Time and the Leap Second

Published

Author(s)

Judah Levine

Abstract

I will discuss the considerations that were important in the design of the current version of Coordinated Universal Time. The design includes the addition of additional “leap” seconds to keep Coordinated Universal time within 0.9 s of the UT1 time scale, which is a proxy for the position of the Earth in space. I will describe the advantages and problems associated with the leap second system and a number of changes that have been proposed to the realization of the time scale.
Citation
Radio Science

Keywords

leap second, Coordinated Universal Time

Citation

Levine, J. (2016), Coordinated Universal Time and the Leap Second, Radio Science (Accessed October 9, 2024)

Issues

If you have any questions about this publication or are having problems accessing it, please contact reflib@nist.gov.

Created December 1, 2016, Updated March 26, 2018