The Schiphol Clock, in Amsterdam’s airportPanther Media Global/Alamy Leap seconds, previously used to keep the world’s clocks in sync with Earth’s rotation, are to be abolished. Instead, universal time will be allowed to drift up to an hour from astronomical time before it is corrected. Representatives from 69 countries voted for the change on 15 October at a meeting of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) in Versailles, France. As the gap between clock time and astronomical time slowly grows, the effect will eventually be “like living on daylight saving time”, but permanently, says Emily Akkermans, curator of time at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London. For most of...