Those eager to put 2008 behind them will have to hold their good-byes for just a moment this New Year`s Eve.
The world`s official timekeepers have added a "leap second" to the last day of the year on Wednesday, to help match clocks to the Earth`s slowing spin on its axis, which takes place at ever-changing rates affected by tides and other factors.The US Naval Observatory, keeper of the Pentagon`s master clock, said it would add the extra second on Wednesday in coordination with the world`s atomic clocks at 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC.
That corresponds to 6:59:59 p.m. EST (23:59:59 GMT), when an extra second will tick by -- the 24th to be added to UTC since 1972, when the practice began.UTC is the time scale kept by highly precise atomic clocks around the world, accurate to about a billionth of a second per day, the Naval Observatory says. For those with a need for precision timing, it has replaced Greenwich Mean Time, or GMT.
