It Turns Out 2016 Will Be One Second Longer Than Expected
How will you spend it?
A leap second will be added to the end of New Year's Eve this year, making 2016 exactly one second longer than usual.
Tokyo residents take photos of the last leap second in 2015.
Jiji Press / AFP / Getty Images
To keep atomic clocks aligned with the Earth's rotation, a leap second is added at least once every decade. So, rather than 2016 ending on 23:59:59 this year, it will end on 23:59:60.
When this last happened on June 30th, 2015, John Oliver launched spendyourleapsecondhere.com, a website that randomly selected a single-second video to "waste that time with."
The website included such video classics as "upside-down sloth making a weird sound," "the mascot for the Toronto Raptors falling on his stupid face," and "Mariah Carey's dog getting in a fight with Mariah Carey's cat during the taping of Mariah Carey's episode of Cribs."
So, what should you do with your leap second?