Did you know there is a website for the Official US time?  Did you know today there is a leap second?  If you didn’t know either or both of these – then you should check out www.time.gov This is the website for the official US time and will also provide information about the leap second being added today.  The website is provided by NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) and the USNO (US Naval Observatory).  So if you ever want to know the accurate time – go to this site.

Now onto leap seconds.  Not only did 2008 get an extra day – but we get an extra second as well.  Although some areas of the world get the extra second in 2009.  UTC (based on atomic clocks) is monitored against UT1 time (based on the rotation of the Earth) and if the two times ever look like they are going to get more than .9 seconds different, a second is added to or taken away from UTC to bring it back in sync.  So this year they are adding a second.  Leap seconds are always added at the end of the day in UTC, so the local time they are added varies based on your timezone, for the Eastern Standard Timezone – this works out to be 7:00 p.m.  So leading up to 7:00 p.m. we will have 6:59 and 58 seconds, 6:59:59, 6:59:60, and then 7:00:00.  Normally it goes from 59 seconds to 00 seconds.  If you watch the time at time.gov you’ll be able to see the extra second.  You can find more out about leap seconds at the Leap Second Wikipedia entry.

So – enjoy your extra second – spend it wisely!