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There’s a good reason why leap years occur every four years. Without leap years, December would eventually turn into summer.
On Thursday, the Leap Day of February 29th, we have a bonus day to keep things in season.
“The way we handle leap years seems pretty cumbersome, but I can’t think of a better way to handle leap years,” he told Business Insider in an email. “We do that so the seasons don’t shift over time.”
As his video (below) makes clear, leap years solve problems about how to track time. In our calendar he measures a year as 365 days, but the Earth’s orbit around the sun actually takes 365.242 days.
O’Donoghue’s animation reveals what would happen if there were no leap years. In 400 years, the calendar months will transition into new seasons.
Over the years, O’Donoghue has spent much of his free time creating animations of astronomical concepts such as: the moon moving away from the earth and the vastness of our solar system.
Why do we need a leap year?
Astronomically, seasons are distinguished by equinoxes and solstices.of vernal equinox It occurs twice a year, in March and September, when the Earth’s equator aligns with the center of the sun.
On that day, day and night will be approximately the same length everywhere on Earth. Then the seasons change. Days get longer and nights get shorter on one side of the Earth, and vice versa on the other side.
of summer solstice is the opposite. On that day, the sun will appear furthest from the equator and the length of day and night will be the most uneven.
It takes the Earth 365.242 days to travel from one March equinox to the next, so our calendar is off by 0.242 days (about 6 hours). Each year it is shorter than the actual season. Of course, that extra quarter of his day adds up to a full day of drifting every four years.
Therefore, leap days realign our calendars to the astronomical seasons.
How does the Earth, the tilt of the Earth’s axis, and the sun create solstices, equinoxes, and seasons?
Cheyenne Gall/Business Insider
“We can’t simply add six hours to the end of the year to solve this problem, because that would cause the sun to rise six hours earlier the next day,” O’Donoghue said. “We can do that too, but only if we don’t mind the 24-hour clock no longer relating to sunrise and sunset.”
Leap years are the least disruptive solution, he added.
“I actually really admire the current leap year system, which provides a great opportunity for people to discuss the celestial mechanics of the Earth,” O’Donoghue said.