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Corrections: January 20

Published: January 19, 2012






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Because of an editing error, an article on Thursday about disagreement among countries over whether to abolish the leap second omitted an element of the leap year cycle. The leap year adds a day to February in a familiar four-year cycle, as the article noted — except in century years not divisible by 400. Thus, although 2000 was a leap year, 2100 will not be. The article also misidentified, in some editions, the point at which noon would strike at sunrise if the leap second is eliminated. That depends on the rate at which the Earth’s spin slows down, which is not precisely predictable. Whatever the timing, the event would occur many thousands of years from now, but probably not “more than 100,000 years from now.”