An Extra Day In 2008

[Mohit Pandey]

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 You are outdated!”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]

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]

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

 

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. :rolleyes:

[UncleAl]

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]

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]

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

[Qfwfq]

:P (though i could be wrong, if i am please correct)

Sure you don't mean Gregorian? :evil:

 

:hihi:

[alexander]

oops, i most definitely do.... what did i say.... *looks back*:evil:

[Qfwfq]

:)

:hyper:, Anyway, and tell this especially to Unk, it seems as if the Julian calendar had leap years too.

[alexander]

yes it did....

 

though 5 day Russian Revolutionary calendar and 6 day/week calendar might not have?

[Qfwfq]

Those prolly did too, I doubt they didn't, but Unk brought in Julian vs Gregorian when it isn't what Mohit was talking about at all, it's a milder correction than a day every four years.

[johnfp]

The simple solution is to eat the .2425 when we set our clocks back each year, instead of setting them back 1 hour we set them back 1 hour, 14 minutes and 33 seconds, which we will soon be doing as soon as we are fully freed from analog clocks. Of course we still set them forward a single hour. This would surely eliminate those poor souls that only get a birthday present every 4 years.

 

Alternate calendar huh...

How about this one?

There are only 4 months in the year, each to correspond to a season.

Each month has 91 days with each day corresponding to the rotation of the earth

There are 7 weeks to a month and 13 days to a week

The work/school week is as follows off1-work5-off2-work4-off1 (yes we work one less day every 13 days)

When we set the clocks forward for Daylight Savings Time we set it ahead just the one hours

When we set the clocks back we set them back 1 hour, 18 minutes and 38 seconds. But every 4 years we set them back 1hour, 18 minutes and 39 seconds.

 

More off time and no missed birthdays.

 

All in favor say Aye!

 

Edited: Ok souldn't the set back time be the same for both? Shucks, I thew out my napkin. Where are those notes?

[CraigD]

Welcome to hypography, johnfp!

The simple solution is to eat the .2425 when we set our clocks back each year, instead of setting them back 1 hour we set them back 1 hour, 14 minutes and 33 seconds, which we will soon be doing as soon as we are fully freed from analog clocks. Of course we still set them forward a single hour.

This scheme would, I think, go pretty bad pretty fast.

 

Consider the time of sunrise and sunset for a particular month, day, and location – for example, 5/1 in Washington, DC, USA. Currently, they are sunrise 5:10 AM sunset 7:01 PM, and will continue to be, except for an effectively undetectable leap second discrepancy every year or so, for a very long time. If the scheme johnfp proposes were implemented, they would become:

5/1/2009, sunrise 3:55 AM sunset 5:46 PM

5/1/2010, sunrise 2:40 AM sunset 4:31 PM

5/1/2011, sunrise 1:26 AM sunset 3:17 PM

5/1/2012, sunrise 12:11 AM sunset 2:02 PM

5/1/2013, sunrise 10:57 PM sunset 12:48 PM

5/1/2014, sunrise 9:42 PM sunset 11:33 AM

etc.

 

We’d have sunrise around midnight in 2012, sunset around noon in 2013! :)

 

Nature has stuck us with a roughly 86400 second-long day, slowly increasing as Earth’s rotation slows.

 

Best, I think, to stick with the current leap year scheme, and let time-standard-setting bodies tweak the TAI to GMT time conversion as needed to handle leap seconds.

[johnfp]

Thanks for the welcome CraigD. And now I see I did make a gross mistake. I took into consideration .2524 was a quarter hour and not a quarter day. So the 15 minutes we should adjust the clocks would actually be about 6 hours once a year. WOW, failed that exam!:)

 

So, let's rethink using round numbers.

Exactly 1 calendar year has passed and the earth has traveled 6 hours past where it was that same time on the present calendar the prior year. This small 6 hour change does not change the time of day but the time of year.

But now we reset the clock back 6 hours....hey, something funny is going on here. How did we get from changing the hours in a year to hours in a day... Our seasons would stay in tack but every year we would be subtracting 6 hours off of sunrise and sunset until the 5th year we would be back where we started. Interesting life cycle we would have no?

 

Yup, this whole thought process is flawed. We have no choice but to change it in multiples of days or indeed we would be changing the sun rise, sun set.

 

Thank you for the insite. Aren't forums great? All this time I could have been hurling through space at 100K kilometers per hour believing I could reinvent the leap year. Very thought provoking...LOL!

 

Peace and thanks!