Yes, the clocks are going to be reset Tuesday night to realign our clocks with sun time. This reset, which occurs now and then, according to this article, is called a "leap second".
But will the clocks be set ahead by one second? or will they be set back by one second?
The CBC headline reads,
Leap seconds: Why our clocks are being set ever-so-slightly ahead
But the subheadline and the article imply the clocks will be set back by one second:
Leap second being added around the world on June 30
and from the article,
Just before midnight Greenwich mean time on June 30, official timekeeping bodies around the world will add a single second — the so-called leap second — to the clock.
While the time-shift seems too infinitesimal to matter to the average person, there are very good reasons for it.
A leap second is an extra second that is added to an agreed-upon day every few years in order to keep Co-ordinated Universal Time (or UTC, the modern replacement for Greenwich mean time), the world standard for regulating clocks, in sync with Mean Solar Time, which marks the passage of time based on the sun's position in the sky.
It means that the last minute UTC of June 30 will actually be 61 seconds long.
Wouldn't setting the clock ahead subtract a second from our time? And wouldn't adding a second require that the clocks be set back, not forward, by one second?
My take on this is that to get 61 seconds into that minute, when the clock hits midnight, it will have to be set back one second so that it will strike midnight again one second later.
I confess to having some confusion, and the aphorism, "spring forward, fall back" doesn't help here.
CBC: our tax dollars at work. The other media seem to understand this (see links below).
Update: CBC has changed the headline to read "back" now.