Public consultation on leap seconds - time to change?

The UK government has launched a public consultation on the future of leap seconds. This has potential impacts on several areas of astronomy and geophysics. Leap seconds are used to keep clocks in time with the Sun. The rate at which the Earth spins varies slightly over time, but the second is defined as a precise number of oscillations of a caesium atom in an atomic clock. As a result, the times measured by atomic clocks and by the position of the Sun drift slightly, and the former occasionally...