時(shí)鐘今天將顯示出11：59：60——時(shí)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(lái)的混亂備戰(zhàn)。

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(zhuǎn)和原子時(shí)間吻合，午夜的前一刻，時(shí)鐘將會(huì)凝滯一秒，表盤(pán)將會(huì)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(dāng)時(shí)Mozilla, Reddit, Foursquare, Yelp, LinkedIn和StumbleUpon都有故障報(bào)告，Linux操作系統(tǒng)和Java編程也出現(xiàn)了問(wèn)題。澳洲航空的安檢系統(tǒng)崩潰導(dǎo)致澳大利亞超過(guò)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(guó)國(guó)家物理實(shí)驗(yàn)室（NPL）的專家將正式把閏秒加進(jìn)英國(guó)時(shí)間，他們警告稱，如果系統(tǒng)沒(méi)有做好充分準(zhǔn)備，被希臘危機(jī)攪得不堪一擊的股市將會(huì)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(guó)國(guó)家物理實(shí)驗(yàn)室時(shí)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(shí)間之神”，他說(shuō)：“如果不妥善處理時(shí)間的話，后果將不堪設(shè)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(jiàn)，所以很難把它補(bǔ)在電腦里，稍有差錯(cuò)，系統(tǒng)就會(huì)暫時(shí)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(dāng)會(huì)導(dǎo)致通信網(wǎng)絡(luò)、金融體系和其他依賴精確時(shí)間計(jì)量的應(yīng)用出現(xiàn)不同步的狀況。閏秒的出現(xiàn)會(huì)在修復(fù)問(wèn)題的編碼里引發(fā)細(xì)微的差錯(cuò)，所以部分電腦系統(tǒng)就會(huì)出現(xiàn)問(wèn)題。而其后果在亞太地區(qū)更為嚴(yán)重，因?yàn)樵摰貐^(qū)是在正常工作時(shí)間出現(xiàn)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(nèi)的大部分歐洲市場(chǎng)確定閏秒將要出現(xiàn)后都關(guān)停了。但是這樣的變化會(huì)影響美國(guó)、日本、澳大利亞、韓國(guó)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(chǎng)處理閏秒的不同策略更是忙中添亂，因?yàn)閬喼奘袌?chǎng)打算正常交易，而美國(guó)市場(chǎng)則計(jì)劃提前停止交易活動(dòng)。

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(guó)國(guó)家物理實(shí)驗(yàn)室的戰(zhàn)略業(yè)務(wù)發(fā)展經(jīng)理萊昂·羅博（Leon Lobo）博士說(shuō)：“如果市場(chǎng)沒(méi)有準(zhǔn)備好，那么在變化發(fā)生時(shí)和那些市場(chǎng)進(jìn)行交易的人可能會(huì)遇到時(shí)間同步的問(wèn)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(jì)算系統(tǒng)用的都是網(wǎng)絡(luò)時(shí)間協(xié)議（NTP），以保證他們和世界原子時(shí)鐘是同步的。但是大多數(shù)系統(tǒng)的編程無(wú)法處理這多出來(lái)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(kāi)發(fā)了一種特殊技術(shù)來(lái)處理所謂的“閏秒”，并且在閏秒正式到來(lái)前逐步在自己的系統(tǒng)中加入毫秒。BT的語(yǔ)音時(shí)鐘會(huì)在報(bào)時(shí)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(shí)間是恒定的，但是地球的自轉(zhuǎn)速度每天大約會(huì)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(shí)和自轉(zhuǎn)時(shí)（依據(jù)地球自轉(zhuǎn)而計(jì)算的時(shí)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(huì)導(dǎo)致時(shí)鐘在半夜的時(shí)候顯示正午的時(shí)間。

Vocabulary

leap second: 閏秒

trading floor: 交易所

Earth's rotation: 地球自轉(zhuǎn)

jittery: 緊張不安的

tinker with: 鼓搗;粗修;胡亂地修補(bǔ)

sporadically: 偶發(fā)地，零星地

synchronization: 同步;同時(shí)性

glitch: 小過(guò)失，差錯(cuò)

英文來(lái)源：每日電訊報(bào)

譯者：楊云兒

審校：許晶晶

編輯：侯瑋萍