時鐘今天將顯示出11：59：60——時間之神添加的閏秒。

Airlines, trading floors and technology companies are braced for chaos today as world timekeepers prepare to add a leap second to global clocks.
世界鐘表今天要給全球的鐘表加一“閏秒”，因此航班、交易所、科技公司正在為即將到來的混亂備戰。

Immediately before midnight, dials will read 11:59:60 as clocks hold their breath for a second to allow the Earth's rotation to catch up with atomic time.
為了使地球自轉和原子時間吻合，午夜的前一刻，時鐘將會凝滯一秒，表盤將會因此顯示出11:59:60。

When the last leap second was added in 2012, Mozilla, Reddit, Foursquare, Yelp, LinkedIn, and StumbleUpon all reported crashes and there were problems with the Linux operating system and programs written in Java. In Australia, more than 400 flights were grounded as the Qantas check-in system crashed.
上一次添加閏秒是在2012年，當時Mozilla, Reddit, Foursquare, Yelp, LinkedIn和StumbleUpon都有故障報告，Linux操作系統和Java編程也出現了問題。澳洲航空的安檢系統崩潰導致澳大利亞超過400架航班取消。

Experts at Britain's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) who will officially add the second to UK time, warned that markets which are already jittery from Greece could suffer transaction delays if their software was not prepared.
英國國家物理實驗室（NPL）的專家將正式把閏秒加進英國時間，他們警告稱，如果系統沒有做好充分準備，被希臘危機攪得不堪一擊的股市將會遭受交易延遲。

"There are consequences of tinkering with time," said Peter Whibberley, Senior Research Scientist in the Time and Frequency group at NPL, who is known to colleagues as "The Time Lord."
英國國家物理實驗室時間和頻率組的資深科研家彼得·韋博利（Peter Whibberley）被同事們稱為“時間之神”，他說：“如果不妥善處理時間的話，后果將不堪設想。”

"Because leap seconds are only introduced sporadically, it is difficult to implement them in computers and mistakes can cause systems to fail temporarily.
添加閏秒的情況很少見，所以很難把它補在電腦里，稍有差錯，系統就會暫時性癱瘓。

"Getting leap seconds wrong can cause loss of synchronization in communication networks, financial systems and many other applications which rely on precise timing. Whenever a leap second occurs, some computer systems encounter problems due to glitches in the code written to handle them. The consequences are particularly severe in the Asia-Pacific region, where leap seconds occur during normal working hours."
閏秒處理不當會導致通信網絡、金融體系和其他依賴精確時間計量的應用出現不同步的狀況。閏秒的出現會在修復問題的編碼里引發細微的差錯，所以部分電腦系統就會出現問題。而其后果在亞太地區更為嚴重，因為該地區是在正常工作時間出現閏秒的。

European markets including London are largely closed when the event is scheduled to occur, but the change will hit trading floors in the US, Japan, Australia, South Korea and Singapore.
包括倫敦在內的大部分歐洲市場確定閏秒將要出現后都關停了。但是這樣的變化會影響美國、日本、澳大利亞、韓國和新加坡的交易所。

To make matters more complicated, stock exchanges are approaching the leap second differently, with Asian markets planning to trade as normal, while US exchanges are expected to stop activity early.
股票交易市場處理閏秒的不同策略更是忙中添亂，因為亞洲市場打算正常交易，而美國市場則計劃提前停止交易活動。

Dr Leon Lobo, Strategic Business Development Manager at NPL added:"Anyone who conducts transactions with those markets when the change occurs could have a synchronization issue if they are not ready."
英國國家物理實驗室的戰略業務發展經理萊昂·羅博（Leon Lobo）博士說：“如果市場沒有準備好，那么在變化發生時和那些市場進行交易的人可能會遇到時間同步的問題。”

Many computing systems use the Network Time Protocol, or NTP, to keep themselves in sync with the world’s atomic clocks. But most are not programmed to deal with an unexpected extra second.
很多計算系統用的都是網絡時間協議（NTP），以保證他們和世界原子時鐘是同步的。但是大多數系統的編程無法處理這多出來的“不速之秒”。

Google has even developed a special technique to deal with what it refers to as a "leap smear" and has been gradually adding milliseconds to its system clocks prior to the official arrival of the leap second. BT's speaking clock will add a second's pause before its third pip.
谷歌甚至開發了一種特殊技術來處理所謂的“閏秒”，并且在閏秒正式到來前逐步在自己的系統中加入毫秒。BT的語音時鐘會在報時第三響之前加一秒的暫停。

Atomic time is constant, but the Earth’s rotation is gradually slowing down by around two thousandths of a second per day.
原子時間是恒定的，但是地球的自轉速度每天大約會下降千分之二秒。

Leap seconds are therefore essential to ensuring civil time does not drift away from time based on the Earth's spin. If not corrected, such a drift would eventually result in clocks showing the middle of the day occurring at night.
所以，閏秒在保證民用時和自轉時（依據地球自轉而計算的時間）之間的一致性上起到了重要的作用。如果不更正二者之間的誤差，最終會導致時鐘在半夜的時候顯示正午的時間。

Vocabulary

leap second: 閏秒

trading floor: 交易所

Earth's rotation: 地球自轉

jittery: 緊張不安的

tinker with: 鼓搗;粗修;胡亂地修補

sporadically: 偶發地，零星地

synchronization: 同步;同時性

glitch: 小過失，差錯

英文來源：每日電訊報

譯者：楊云兒

審校：許晶晶

編輯：侯瑋萍