Leap Second 2015 — Experts recently announced that Tuesday, June 30, will be longer than usual. Why? Because leap second will occur. This extra time is added every now and then, so that things would not start to drift over many years.

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Do you want lunch time to occur in the middle of the night? Of course not, right? So, in order to ensure that this ridiculous change of time won't happen, leap seconds are added once in a while to world time. And on June 30, Tuesday, the day will be a second longer than the usual.

According to Rob Cockcroft of McMaster University, the added second is a move to ensure time stays in sync with the Earth's rotation, which is slowing down since the ocean tides are moving ahead of it. Due to events such as earthquakes and the moon, which are responsible for controlling the tides, leap seconds are significant to pull them back into proper alignment, The Hamilton Spectator reported.

"Earth's rotation is gradually slowing down a bit, so leap seconds are a way to account for that," said Daniel MacMillan of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Unlike leap year that happens at regular intervals, there are only 25 leap seconds added and recorded since 1972. And typically, a leap second is added either on June 30 or December 31. When this time occurs, Science Daily revealed the clock would move from 23:59:59 to 00:00:00 the next day. But with the leap second on June 30, UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) will move from 23:59:59 to 23:59:60, and then to 00:00:00 on July 1. In practice, many systems are instead turned off for one second.

So, what are the effects of leap seconds? For most people, they won't notice something has happened, Cockcroft said. However, many are still worried that this year's leap second would cause computer chaos.

In the past, the leap second has caused problems for tech companies like Google, LinkedIn and Reddit Inc., Los Angeles Times noted. While The Independent reported that this added time could wreak havoc on the Internet's infrastructure and for computing systems not equipped to deal with it. In 2012, some Web sites faltered as servers got confused. In Australia, over 400 commercial flights were delayed after the Qantas Airline check-in system crashed.

Despite concerns that this year's leap second could cause computer bedlam, Cockcroft said it's unlikely that those aforementioned effects will happen happened again.

"If software and programs have been updated, everything should go according to plan," he said.

In separate news, the upcoming leap second will occur in the middle of the trading week, which can pose a risk to US markets. As per New York Post, the added time can whack between the winding down of Tuesday's futures trading and the beginning of Asia's Wednesday business.

Most U.S. financial markets are supposed to open and close as scheduled during the affected period. However, in a broader online business realm, the impact of the possible leap-second-induced disruption has only become a significant issue as the pace of business and trading has sped up over the years.

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