Remember the Millennium Bug? Get ready for the Year 2038 Problem

WORRIED scientists have begun a countdown to a day of potential global chaos.

If the doom-mongers are right, power stations could black out, banking systems crash and anything else that relies on computers go into meltdown. But the good news they have 24 years to think of a solution.

The Year 2038 Problem, as it is called, stems from the fact that computers measure time by counting each second. Odd as it may seem, many start from January 1, 1970. This takes up memory and if the storage isn’t big enough the Y2038 Bug could strike.

The fear surrounds computers with 32-bit processors. These can only count 2,147,483,647 seconds. And at 3:14:07am on January 19, 2038, they reach that limit.

The extent of the problem is unclear. Some computers may be fine but others could turn back the clock or stop working.

Most new computers have 64-bit memories and so will not be affected. Similarly, smartphones are moving to 64-bit. The concern is specialised equipment in planes, traffic lights, factories and power stations, which could prove hard to upgrade.

The scare is reminiscent of the Millennium Bug – which predicted that the world’s computers would collapse in 2000 as older machines were not ready to calculate years starting with a ‘2’. The potential disaster largely passed without incident, but it has not prevented warnings of chaos around Y2038.

Professor Alan Woodward, a cyber security expert at Surrey University, said: ‘When people first designed computers, they never imagined the numbers would be so astronomical.’