Changing Time Measurement?

Greenwich Mean Time would become an "irrelevance" if proposals to redefine how time is measured are accepted, an historian at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, UK, has warned.
US scientists want to change the current system, which keeps clocks in sync with solar time by adding a leap second every 18 months or so.
UK scientists believe the meridian's role in time-keeping is under threat.
The Prime Meridian, which runs through Greenwich in south-east London, became the basis for the world's time-keeping in 1884. The decision stemmed from the work 200 years previously of the first English Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed, who calculated that the Earth rotated on its axis once every 24 hours. That discovery meant that time could be defined by the Sun's position relative to a point on the Earth - in this case the meridian running through Greenwich.
It turned out that the Earth's rotation is ever so slightly slowing down. Since 1972 that anomaly was corrected by adding a so-called leap second when necessary.
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