It turns out "now" isn't a single thing. As you read this, your GPS, the New York stock exchange, and your phone all run on different definitions of time, and almost no one notices. We were raised to think seconds are a fact of nature, as solid as gravity. But someone had to sit down and vote on when each one begins and ends.
In 2035, an adjustment that existed precisely to keep clocks from drifting away from the Earth will disappear. And some asked to wait until 2040, because their satellites depend on nothing changing.
What leaves us thinking: if the Earth spins ever more irregularly and no clock can keep pace with it forever, would you rather our clocks stay tethered to the planet even if that brings glitches, or break free of it so as not to touch the systems that already depend on atomic time?
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