New Year '05: One second later

To compensate for the difference between Earth rotation time and atomic time, on the 31st of December this year, there will be 61 seconds before reaching the first day of 2006.

This has been done many times before as Wendy Grossman from Scientific American reports: "The reason: Leap seconds are not new: 22 have been added since 1972, on June 30 or December 31. [...] Leap seconds are needed because the earth's spin is slowing down, gradually and unevenly. The rotational changes arise because of tidal forces exerted by the moon and inertial effects related to the liquid outer core sloshing around and to the cycle of evaporation, in which water at the equator gets deposited at the poles as ice that melts seasonally."

[ Wait a second! ]