An Extra Day In 2008

Mohit Pandey · 02-29-2008

Today is a special day.
I was telling my sister how today ,i.e 29th February is an extra day in this year. Then I told why it is so. Earth takes 365 days, 6 hours to complete one revolution forming an Earth year. This 6 hours get added to 24 hours in 4 years. Thus, we have a new day added to February month of every successive fourth year.

Just then my mind asked why it is necessary to do so. You would say that to account for the 6 hours which we are not counting every year. Thus, maintaining a balance.
But if we don’t do this. What will happen? This uncounted 6 hours will get added continuously each year. Then what we are losing. It is not going to affect our daily life. Nobody is going to tell you , “ Hey guys! You are outdated!” because the time on the whole Earth will be same. Unless an alien civilization ,which is using our sun for calculating time, tells us about our situation, we won’t be able to know our antiquated time setting .

sanctus · 02-29-2008

Wrong, in Europe usually August is in Summer, without this day every 4 years (a part if it is also a multiple of 100) in a couple of years (actually more likely kilo-years) we would have August in winter in Europe...

freeztar · 02-29-2008

The wiki on Leap Year does a good job of explaining this.

Quote:

Because seasons and astronomical events do not repeat at an exact number of full days, a calendar which had the same number of days in each year would, over time, drift with respect to the event it was supposed to track. By occasionally inserting (or intercalating) an additional day or month into the year, the drift can be corrected.

Leap year - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I've always found it odd too Mohit.
I have not been able to come up with a viable alternative to our modern calender, but in all honesty, I haven't tried that hard. I like how the Maya structured their calender, but it's most likely antiquated for today's needs (commerce, economy, etc.).

Have you ever tried to come up with an alternative calender?
If not, I recommend it as it is a good exercise in math as well as creative thinking.

UncleAl · 03-01-2008

Julian vs Gregorian calender. It makes a difference. USSR's October Revolution happened in September.

The solar year is 365.2425 days long. If you want your calendar to stay locked with your seasons you adjust your calendar to reflect empirical reality - or marginally relocate your planet. That last plays havoc with average temperaure (re solar constant at orbit), puts you at risk for near Earth orbiting objects (established orbital resonances break), and annoys engineers.

alexander · 03-10-2008

Actually Uncle, not technically so, Julian vs Gregorian calendar implies 13 day difference, thus Christmas in Russian orthodox churches, that remain Julian, are on January 7th vs Dec 25 as it is in Gregorian calendar. The Octoberist revolution, if you recall, happened, or was finished rather, on October 25, when the winter palace was taken over. So, even using Julian calendar dates, we still date back to Oct 12. Russia was still Julian at the time, so technically you would have to add 13 days anyways to the Gregorian date to get the julian one, and you would get a date of November 7th, so you could have called it a Novemberist revolution :P (though i could be wrong, if i am please correct)

alexander · 03-10-2008

but in any case, russian calendar is a weird thing all on to itself, i dont think there is another country that has had that much weirdness in their dates

prior to prior to 1709 - no official calendar
1709 - 1918 - julian (127 years after all of europe adopted gregorian)
1918 - 1923 - Gregorian
1923 - 1931 - 5 day Russian Revolutionary calendar
1931 - 1940 - 6 day/week calendar was in effect
1940 - present day - Gregorian calendar