Leap second in numbers: Four extra babies will be born, 170,000 cigarettes smoked – and the rich will get that little bit richer
Change will happen at 23.59 co-ordinated universal time (UTC) this evening
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Louise Thomas
Editor
The world will gain an extra second this evening as authorities’ co-ordinate to bring clocks in line across the globe.
As June turns into July, Greenwich Mean Time, the world’s digital clocks synchronise with the average time the earth rotates around the sun. But, while a second may seem too minute to notice, these are all the things that will happen during just one second.
Four babies will be born, or exactly 4.3 new humans.
And one person will die, (exactly 1.8 people will die).
160,000 plastic bags will be used.
The equivalent of just over a football field-size of forest is cut down every second, somewhere in the world.
2.4 million pounds of carbon dioxide will be released into the air, according to data from 2012 and published in the Nature Climate Change journal.
The United States alone will consume 3,527 litres of oil, just a fraction of the 19 million barrels they use every single day.
There will be 2,361 emails sent.
Around 6,000 Tweets will be posted.
Bill Gates, the world’s richest man according to Forbes, will make $114.16 in interest.
The Queen makes just £1.69 per second, taking into account only her taxpayer funded grant (£40m) and the additional £13.4m provided from renting palace rooms.
The US national debt will increase by $16,668.
Greece’s national debt will also increase by $798, or €717.
Meanwhile, the poorest three billion people continue to earn less than $1.25 daily. Or, less than $0.000014 every second.
There will be 173,611 cigarettes smoked.
Almost $574 are spent every second attempting to combat the illegal drugs trade in the US.
One application for gun ownership will be processed by the United States FBI, according to data from last year, one of approximately 21 million submitted every year. Of these, roughly 1.1 per cent fail.
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