World time may be finally decoupled from Earth's rotation

The International Bureau of Weights and Measures will consider in mid-October a complete disconnection of UTC from the Earth's physical rotation, Financial Times reports.

The reason is that since around 2015, the Earth has been rotating faster. Because of this, a negative leap second — removing one second from the UTC time scale — could theoretically become necessary by 2035.

Such a step has never been used before. Scientists warn that deleting a second could seriously disrupt digital systems that rely on precise time stamps.