Why Should We Get Rid of Leap Seconds?

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JT Janssen: There's very good reasons why we would want to get rid of the leap second. But how did that decision get made? Who gets to decide whether we have a leap second or not? Most countries actually supported the change in the definition amongst them in the UK. If you are a druid opposed to atomic time, we'd love to hear from you. The email address is ScienceWeeklyathegardian.com.

At a recent conference in France, scientists and government representatives voted to scrap the leap second by 2035. Leap seconds are added periodically to synchronise atomic time and astronomical time, which get out of sync because of variations in the Earth’s rotation. Madeleine Finlay speaks to JT Janssen, the chief scientist at NPL, the National Physical Laboratory, about the differences between these two times, and what can go wrong when leap seconds are added to our clocks. Help support our independent journalism at theguardian.com/sciencepod