# Time lag in bounty period

A couple of minutes ago, I received a system-generated message from the inbox, which says that

Your question bounty is completed and will be auto-closed after a 24-hour grace period.

But then I refreshed the question page immediately and saw the following message:

This question has an open bounty worth +250 reputation ... ending in 37 minutes.

While this is not really an important issue, I am curious to know if there is any knwon reason for this time lag of 37 minutes long. Also, which time is the true endpoint of the bounty period? The one indicated by the inbox or the one on the question page?

• I assume you are talking about the bounty you offered on this question. According to the timeline, the bounty was started at 2014-05-11 05:54:46Z with the grace period starting 2014-05-18 (today) at that same time. The current meta question was posted at 05:34:13Z today, approximately 20 minutes before the grace period was set to begin. (I really have no idea why you would have received notification of the grace period starting before the grace period started.) – user642796 May 18 '14 at 14:41
• @ArthurFischer What you have mentioned is a second mystery. When the commencement of grace period was announced on the bounty question page, I checked this meta question and saw that it was posted 19 minutes ago (this agrees with the "approximately 20 minutes" you have mentioned). So, there is also a discrepancy between the said "37 minutes" and the actual 20 (or 19) minutes. Seems like MSE has a clock synchronization problem. – user1551 May 18 '14 at 15:22