Comments on: Why we have leap days

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Wed, 21 Mar 2012 04:07:11 +0000

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By: john

john — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:36:32 +0000

WHY DON’T WE NOTICE THE 6 HOURS WE GAIN EVERY YEAR? Wouldn’t the sunset a lot later? Like instead of setting at 5:30 pm in the winter it would set at 11:30 p.m.. We would notice the progression.

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 01:01:42 +0000

Come on people! The pope fixed it up best he could back then, I say lets start planning on making this whole thing better. If we can speed up the Earth in it’s orbit slight faster, we can cut off the extra .24 day in a year and synchronize the number of days so it fits to EXACTLY one year in the Earth’s orbit.

That will of course make the Earth slightly closer to the sun – hmm, maybe a bad idea. How about instead we slow the Earth’s orbit down, so every year is 366 days, and every year has a Feb 29th! By precisely putting the Earth into it’s correct orbit – we can get rid of this whole nonsense of leap days and years of different lengths. And – the Earth would be slightly further away from the sun, maybe helping this global warming thing a tiny bit.

If we make the year 372 days long, each month could also be 31 days each, further clearing up this nonsense of months of different lengths. The Earth would be slightly more away from the sun, thus cooling it off a little more.

So simply moving the Earth in it’s orbit will fix a whole bunch of problems! Of course, all computer programs would need to be rewritten to know about the new calendar, this would make the Y2K issue look like nothing!

If this all works, then we can start messing with the moon’s orbit, slow it down so each lunar month is also 31 days to match our new calendar. With a little bit of work, we could also move it in it’s orbit a bit, so the full moon is always on the 1st day of each month. Tide tables would be greatly simplified, since they’d be the same each month!

By: donald hilton

donald hilton — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 10:02:03 +0000

My brother was born on a leap year feb 29th, and he has twins born on a leap year feb 29th exactly 29 minutes apart in a hospital that was completed and opened on feb 29th exactly 29 miles from my brothers house. Now what are the odds of that???

By: Mavis mabry

Mavis mabry — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 07:00:56 +0000

Question? If we have 7 days in a week and 52 weeks in a year, how can we have 365.25 days in a year. 7 times 52 is 364 not 365.25. We are teaching our students in school wrong. How do we rectify this?

By: Dave

Dave — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 01:17:58 +0000

60 x 60 x 24 x 365 x 4 + 864000 = 126230400 / 4/365 /24 / 60/60 = 1.000684931506849. Is this wrong?

By: Rum and Reason » Top o’ the orbit to ya! | Bad Astronomy

Rum and Reason » Top o’ the orbit to ya! | Bad Astronomy — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 09:20:13 +0000

[...] aren’t an even number of days in a year (that pesky extra 0.24 in the 365.24 days per year messes things up), and there are other minor factors as [...]

By: Строительство,ремонт,отделка

Строительство,ремонт,отделка — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 11:19:31 +0000

Укладка плитки быстро

By: Fodder « Voice of Truth

Fodder « Voice of Truth — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:25:41 +0000

[...] is a very good explanation of why we have leap days, by Phil Plait, author of the Bad Astronomy [...]

By: CuriosButNotGeorge

CuriosButNotGeorge — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 07:49:03 +0000

So, I understand -I think- about leap years and other calendar systems.
My question is related to this extraction of your text: “Every other unit of time we use (second, hour, week, month) is rather arbitrary.”
So, how was it decided (arbitrary) that a minute is a 60th of and hour, and a second a 60th of a minute but then they stopped there?
Why did the second not get divided using the sexagesimal system and they used the decimal system instead (10ths, 100ths, 1000ths of a second … and so on…?