Messages in this thread | | | Date | Thu, 13 Jan 2000 20:43:47 +0100 | From | Jan Echternach <> | Subject | Re: February 30th 2000 |
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On Thu, Jan 13, 2000 at 01:00:54AM +0100, Robert Schiele wrote: > > http://www.isoft.itil.com/bluncal_home.htm > > The calender described on this page might be used by some strange people, but > it is not used by most people. In the calender that is in use all around the > world the described problem is _not_ solved by a 'February 30th' but by leap > seconds, which occur sometimes.
No, the problem _is_ solved by adding an extra day in February. The web page just forgot to mention that every 100 years a leap year is omitted. Thus, the extra day is Febrary 29th.
A year isn't exactly 365 days long (as most people already know). The purpose of leap years is to approximate the actual length of a year. Without leap years the northern hemisphere would have cold "summers" and warm "winters" one day. (This already happened a long time ago when calendars weren't as good as they are now.)
Leap seconds solve a mostly independent problem: A day isn't 86400 seconds long. Positive or negative leap seconds are inserted once in a while because the sun should be shining at noon and not at midnight.
-- Jan
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