NATURE BRIEFING

16 October 2026

More land for conservation is positive, but doesn’t necessarily protect biodiversity, say researchers. Plus, say goodbye to the leap second and how the Inca empire lasted longer than we thought.

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Metrologists retire the leap second immediately, instead of by 2035. Credit: Alejandro Martinez Velez/Europa Press via Getty

Leap second goes into early retirement

On 15 October, member states of the General Conference on Weights and Measures (CGPM) voted to scrap the ‘leap second’ — periodic adjustments to the world’s clocks to align time given by the sun’s position in the sky, with the more stable ticking of atomic clocks, known as Universal Coordinated Time. The CGPM had previously voted to ditch leap seconds by 2035, but yesterday’s decision had immediate effect.…