Thursday, February 29, 2024

Why do we have leap years?


Bychykhin_Olexandr/Getty Images

The simple explanation for why we have leap days is that it takes 365.2422 days for our planet to complete one revolution around the sun. That means each typical 365-day year ends a quarter-day’s worth short of the complete orbit. If we abolished leap years right now, sometime in the 2400s, January would drift into summertime for the Northern Hemisphere. 



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