Actually, this is why I don't really like the Gregorian calendar. I do have an alternate solution that I thought up, but I can't discuss it on the thread without speculating a new theory.Xilus said:
Xilus said:
Earth completes one orbit in approx. 365.25 days. The leap year (and other modifications accounting for the 'approximately' part) is there precisely so that the calendars don't drift w/r to astronomical events (seasons, solstices).Xilus said:
Yeah, I want more extra days! One every year!Xilus said:
February, in the UK, is often a miserable month weather wise, so it's a waste having the extra day then. It would be better to have the extra day in June, when it's warmer and the days are longer.Xilus said:
Actually, this is exactly what was happening in the early days of calendars. They got the number of days in a year WRONG and the seasons kept marching away from what the calendars were telling them. There is NO regular rule for timing the Earth's rotation perfectly. Not only do we need to have leap days but they do not occur every four years. To keep things more in order, they leave out the leap day at the turn of a century but, another thing, they slip it in on the change of a millennium. These little 'tiffles' help to keep midday in Greenwich at 1200 at least once a year.Xilus said:
Xilus said:
Yes.Xilus said:
This is an 'interesting fact' but it is no longer of any consequence to us because we have another, more reliable time standard, which is comparatively rock solid. Plants, animals (including us) and the weather do not work to the time accuracy that our time standard has. So sit back and listen to the Greenwich 'Pips' time signal on the radio or watch the time change on your smart phone. On most days, the Sun will not appear to be directly 'overhead' at Noon on your local clock - it wavers about by around 20 minutes over the year. Even Polaris, the star that has been used by navigators for centuries is not exactly over our Geographical North Pole and we have to compensate for this in astro navigation. As a way of finding North, the place of Polaris will be taken by various other stars over the next several thousand years as they appear to drift past the North Pole. You can't rely on ANYTHING up there to be in the same place at the same time of day / year, even during your lifetime.Helios said:
Mark44 said:
Mark44 said:
A leap year is a year that contains an extra day, making it 366 days long instead of the usual 365. This extra day, called a leap day, is added to the month of February, which is why leap years are also known as "bissextile years."
Leap years are necessary to keep our calendar in sync with the Earth's orbit around the sun. It takes the Earth approximately 365.2422 days to orbit the sun, so without leap years, our calendar would slowly fall out of alignment with the seasons.
Leap years occur every four years, with a few exceptions. The rule is that a year is a leap year if it is evenly divisible by 4. However, there are also exceptions to this rule. For example, a year that is divisible by 100 but not by 400 is not a leap year.
February is the month that gains the extra day in a leap year. This is because the ancient Romans, who created the concept of leap years, considered February to be the last month of the year. Therefore, it made sense to add the extra day to the end of February.
Yes, there are several other calendar systems that use leap years. For example, the Hebrew calendar adds a leap month seven times within a 19-year cycle to keep the lunar and solar cycles in sync. The Islamic calendar, on the other hand, uses a purely lunar system and does not have leap years.
