For the first time in three years, the world experienced a "leap second" at 7:59 p.m. ET on Tuesday. The practice is meant to compensate for the Earth’s slowing rotation.

Scientists measure the time in a day on a system called Coordinated Universal Time – known as UTC – which gives 60 seconds in a minute or 86,400 seconds in a day.

However, the Earth rotates two milliseconds longer than that, leading to a divergence.

Weather patterns and the moon’s gravitational pull also help slow down the Earth’s rotation culminating in the full leap second.

"Earth’s rotation is gradually slowing down a bit, so leap seconds are a way to account for that,” Daniel MacMillan, of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said in a statement.

The practice started in 1972 when scientists noticed clocks were misaligned with the earth's rotation. Since then, there have been about 25 instances of a leap second with the most recent occurring on June 30, 2012.

The phenomenon usually occurs on either June 30 or December 31, with clocks showing "23:59:60" instead of the normal "23:59:59".

The extra second received a mixed review online.

The phenomenon may make for easy jokes but some organizations are upset about its continued existence.

The United States' official global positioning system committee declared the leap second hazardous to technology last year.

The committee argues clocks and mapping systems aren't built to handle the formatting of an extra second, leading to further technological woes.

Warnings about leap seconds are typically released about six months before the actual occurrence, giving little time to prepare such things as web servers, clocks and radar systems.

The committee argued the phenomenon should be eliminated within five years.

However, a Canadian researcher says the problems posed by the added second are minimal at most.

"It might cause minor problems, nothing we have to worry about crazily," said Rob Cockroft, a postdoctoral research fellow and physicis and astronomy lecturer at McMaster University, in an interview with CTV News.

"There are some disruptions but nothing major."

He noted certain web servers crashed the last time it occurred but technicians were able to fix them in a few hours.

A proposal to get rid of leap seconds is set to be discussed at the World Radiocommunication Conference in November.