Paris: By pure chance, Greece will gain fractionally more time to meet a midnight deadline today to pay its IMF debts - thanks to a move by international time arbiters in the Paris Observatory to add one second to the world's clocks.
The so-called International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service charged with ensuring that earth time keeps pace with time measured by super-accurate atomic clocks ruled earlier this year that a tiny pause was needed to account for a gradual slowing-down in the earth's rotation.
The change, which will allow earth time to catch up with atomic time, will now take effect today at the stroke of midnight Greenwich Mean Time, also known as UTC (coordinated universal time) in French.
"Very exceptionally, the minute ... will last one second longer than normal, that is, 61 seconds instead of 60," the Paris Observatory, which houses the international time service, said in a statement.
That literally gives Athens an extra second to either come to agreement with creditors over a cash-for-reform package that has already been five months in discussion, or otherwise find 1.6 billion euros owing to the International Monetary Fund.
"Yes, but one second isn't much time," Sebastien Bize, joint director of the Observatory's Space Time Reference Systems (SYRTE) arm, told Reuters TV. "And unfortunately, we can't add more than one second."
The so-called International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service charged with ensuring that earth time keeps pace with time measured by super-accurate atomic clocks ruled earlier this year that a tiny pause was needed to account for a gradual slowing-down in the earth's rotation.
The change, which will allow earth time to catch up with atomic time, will now take effect today at the stroke of midnight Greenwich Mean Time, also known as UTC (coordinated universal time) in French.
That literally gives Athens an extra second to either come to agreement with creditors over a cash-for-reform package that has already been five months in discussion, or otherwise find 1.6 billion euros owing to the International Monetary Fund.
Advertisement
© Thomson Reuters 2015
COMMENTS
Advertisement
"Disgrace": Greece's Main Opposition Party Slams 6-Day Working Week Greece Will Now Work 6 Days A Week, Labour Unions Call It "Barbaric" Greece Shuts More Tourist Sites Amid Scorching Heat Wave Amid Huge Row, Karnataka Pauses Bill For Reservation In Private Sector Firms "Relocate To Vizag": Andhra Minister To IT Firms Amid Karnataka Quota Row "I Divorce You... Your Ex-Wife": Dubai Princess Dumps Husband In Insta Post Amid Huge Row, Karnataka Pauses Bill For Reservation In Private Sector Firms "Animal Cruelty": Abu Dhabi's First Owl Cafe Goes Viral, Internet Angry Madras High Court's Big Rebuke To Probe Agency In Illegal Sand Mining Row Track Latest News Live on NDTV.com and get news updates from India and around the world.