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The International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) voted on Thursday to scrap the leap second, a temporary time adjustment used to keep atomic clocks aligned with the Earth’s rotating day. While members previously agreed in 2022 to stop using leap seconds by 2035, they are now accelerating this change to take effect on May 20th next year. This date aligns with World Metrology Day and aims to prevent potential failures in global tech infrastructure similar to the Y2K bug scare of the 1990s.

The decision to move forward is driven by concerns that the Earth’s rotation may soon require timekeepers to subtract time rather than add it, a scenario never attempted before. Major technology companies including Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have supported scrapping the system after several platforms like Foursquare, Reddit, LinkedIn, and Yelp suffered outages during past leap second adjustments.

Instead of adding seconds, timekeepers will switch to using "leap hours," allowing atomic and astronomical time to gradually drift apart until an entire hour must be added. Experts note this significant shift is not expected to occur for around 3,000 years.