After decades of debate, the world's official timekeepers have at last agreed to introduce a leap hour from next year. You might not have noticed that an extra leap second has been introduced to official clocks 27 times since 1972 so that the time on Earth would correspond to that in the heavens—to adjust for our planet spinning faster. Last week, delegates voted at the France-based International Bureau of Weights and Measures to replace leap seconds with a leap hour. The decision means that universal time or UTC can drift for up to an hour before the leap hour is required, which may not happen for centuries. For now, it presents teachers a chance to explain the concept to schoolchildren and plant another seed of science in their minds.
