/ 8 September 2005

Japan to leap one second ahead

Wanting to be as punctual as possible, Japan will next year move its clocks ahead — by one second.

Japan will head one second into the future on January 1 2006 when it adjusts the high-precision atomic clock that keeps Japan Standard Time using advanced physics.

The “leap-second” is being added on to the clock in line with a global effort to make official time in synch with the Earth’s orbit, the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology said.

The institute said that standard time should not be 0,9 of a second faster or slower than the actual astronomic time. The last time the atomic clock had a second added on was seven years ago.

Japan is not used to adjusting clocks, being the only major industrialised nation that does not practice daylight savings. — AFP