We must be getting better at this because I haven’t seen warnings at work about this happening in a some years. All our computers, phones, tablets, GPS systems and whatever need to know the exact time down to probably millionths of a second or else there can be problems. The majority of us wouldn’t notice anything serious yet the astronauts living on ISS, satellites in the GPS system and sadly, weapons do. I once heard on Stuff You Should Know mention how those living on ISS pull ahead of us by a thousandth of a second every year and they’re only 400 km above the earth. Imagine how far ahead the hardware providing TV, the weather and other vital data get? Meanwhile, one of Phyllis Schlafly’s dipshit offspring (Andrew) runs a moron conservative wikipedia claiming relativity is a Liberal lie amongst other willfully ignore myths. Gotta’ love it. Right on the moron scale with the MAGAts claiming the vaccine puts in a tracking chip while they bloviate their doings on TikTok, FeceBook and Instagram.
Back to the point. UTC was developed over the decades to get everything precise since we know the Earth isn’t consistent with its rotation nor our revolution around the Sun is changing microscopically as our star loses mass. The earthquake that caused the horrible tsunami in 2004 knocked the planet’s axis off by 0.1°! By the Fifties and Sixties, Scientists gained agreement on the Caesium-133 (we Yankees spell it Cesium) atom’s radiation periods or wavelengths; somebody who’s more knowledgable on this jump in please! Either way, this has been pretty solid but remember, Earth doesn’t always to follow the rules and on this day 50 years ago, the atomic clocks as they’re called, had to add a second to keep synchronization; ergo it wasn’t midnight July 1, 1972 until 23:59:60 of June 30, 1972 came and went. After then, we’ve had 26 more seconds added (all in my lifetime!) on either June 30 or December 31. I barely remember the last two added in 2015 and 2016 respectively. Next year, the process is up for review to see if there’s a better plan.