Leap Days May Be Going Away In the Not Too Distant Future

StartsWithABang writes: The need for a February 29th, once every four years, doesn't just give us an extra day this year, but it keeps the calendar from drifting and failing to align with the seasons. Even so, the scheme we have worked out today, where years divisible by 4 but not those divisible by 100 unless also divisible by 400 get an extra day, isn't perfect, and will get worse as time goes on. The current misalignment between our calendar and the actual Earth's orbit is big enough that we'll be off by a day every 3,200 years, but bigger news is that the Earth's rotation rate is changing, as our day lengthens and our spin slows down. In another 4 million years, we won't need leap days at all, and if we extrapolate backwards, we can find that early Earth had a day that lasted just 6.5 hours.

Comments

4 million years == 'not too distant'

[Ann O'Nymous-Coward]

SINCE WHEN?

Re:4 million years == 'not too distant'

[Okian Warrior]

SINCE WHEN?

We're just about to discover a cure for aging.

Didn't you get the memo?

Re:4 million years == 'not too distant'

[neminem]

Since about 4 million years ago, clearly.

Re:4 million years == 'not too distant'

[Anonymous Coward]

When all your friends are geologists.

Re:4 million years == 'not too distant'

[JoeMerchant]

1% of the life of the Earth, or ~80x the time since homo sapiens speciated...

Re:4 million years == 'not too distant'

[penguinoid]

I wouldn't worry about it. Not in a million years.

Re: 4 million years == 'not too distant'

[johnsnails]

My friends are young earth geologist you insensitive clod!

Not too distant future....

[raftpeople]

1 day difference in 3,200 years? Better bump this up to high priority

Re:Not too distant future....

[Austerity Empowers]

If it exceeds my expected lifespan, it is "the distant future".

I eat a lot of red meat. Tuesday is the distant future.

God must have been pretty amazing

[turning in circles]

To build the world and everything in it in 6.5 hour days. Wow.

Re:God must have been pretty amazing

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Kind of explains the platypus, though, doesn't it?

Re:God must have been pretty amazing

[killkillkill]

I ran the math and the early Earth, 6000 years ago, did not have 6.5 hours days. Nice try, Science.

Not too distant future?

[nwaack]

False. I feel like I just got click-baited.

Re:Not too distant future?

[BarbaraHudson]

You did - look at the submitter.

Also, since we don't know when we got the moon (we're not even sure how we got it), we can't just extrapolate backwards to a day of 6.5 hours.

Re:Not too distant future?

[NormalVisual]

You did - look at the submitter.

A submitter that has had dozens of articles accepted, but has posted exactly one comment, and that was merely to make a correction to his/her submission. I frankly would not be too upset to see a rule implemented that says if you're not an active participant on the site, you don't get to submit articles. It might help to curb some of the unabashed clickbaiting.

let's abandon DST first

[turkeydance]

or make DST permanent. just stop changing the clocks. each US state can make that choice. it's not a federal thing.

meh, we had a good run.

[Notorious G]

That's it, game over.

Bang

[Longjmp]

Can someone make StartsWithABang end with a bang please?

He's getting really annoying and any of his post isn't news nor relevant.
No leap days soon? In 4 million years. Right.
And I'm saying that as someone who is interested in astronomy.

Silly Calendar - Make it metric(ish)

[pubwvj]

Why have months be uneven? Why add the extra leap year day to February of all the worst of months? I wish they would do 13 moon phase months and then we get a little extra at the end of the year at Summer Solstice and every four years we could have an extra day then.

Re:Silly Calendar - Make it metric(ish)

[blue9steel]

Damn it, we don't have time for rational solutions!

Re:Silly Calendar - Make it metric(ish)

[Obfuscant]

Why add the extra leap year day to February of all the worst of months?

This! Yeah, adding another day of winter is just so depressing. They should add the day in July, maybe next to July 4 so we could have a four or five day weekend in the summer when it is nice and sunny and warm out.

But don't worry, in a few years it will be warm and sunny in February, and you won't want another day in July when it will be unbearably hot.

and then we get a little extra at the end of the year

I think there ought to be a system where we can bank extra days if we don't want to use them and let them roll over into the next year or maybe two years later. That way, if we're having a good year we can extend it by a week or two, and if we're having a bad year we can end it early.

Re:Silly Calendar - Make it metric(ish)

[AthanasiusKircher]

I think there ought to be a system where we can bank extra days if we don't want to use them and let them roll over into the next year or maybe two years later. That way, if we're having a good year we can extend it by a week or two, and if we're having a bad year we can end it early.

Yeah, the Ancient Romans tried that system. Originally, months began with the new moon, and the high priest was tasked with declaring when that happened. (The day was the Kalends of the month, meaning "called out," since it was the day the new month was announced by the priest -- it's where we get our word "calendar.)

Anyhow, calling out the new moon was a bit of an imprecise business, since when is that last sliver gone and when does the new one begin? It's a bit of a judgment call. High priests were known to take bribes to delay the Kalends or move it up a day.

In the later Republic, the various month lengths were more standardized and no longer depended on the moon. But they didn't add up to a year exactly (355 days), so every so often they'd need an intercalation to introduce an extra month, named Terminalia, which happened after the 23rd of February. (Why did it happen then? Probably because that was toward the end of winter and not much tended to be going on business-wise, so it wasn't disruptive to commerce or other cycles to have the calendar messed up then.)

Anyhow, the priest could get a bigger bribe for inserting or not inserting the intercalation MONTH in a particular year. If your friends are in office, they get a longer year; if your enemies are in office, they get a shorter year. You get the picture. (Also, the Romans had a lot of superstitions around particular days and months of the calendar; doing an intercalation in a pivotal year of war or something could be problematic from a luck perspective.)

Anyhow, this crap got the calendar so messed up that eventually Caesar came in and had to create the so-called "Year of Confusion" (46 BC), which was 445 days long, just to get the seasons aligned correctly again.

So, yeah -- I'd advise against this sort of calendar tampering. Bad stuff happens. Heck, Caesar died only a couple years later, which maybe goes to show the Roman superstitions on intercalation were right. (or not...)

In another 4 million years

[Anonymous Coward]

Just so we're clear, is the last year with a leap day the year 4,000,000 or 4,002,016? Asking for a friend...

And then it turns around

[Teun]

And then it turns around so we need to take a day out every once in a while.
In less than 8 million years it'll be one day per year!

Well when is it?

[Thraxy]

Can you give us a date? I need to set a notification on my phone to when we won't be using leap days anymore.

Leap days are programming tests

[WaffleMonster]

Those of you who didn't cut corners or use the wrong functions for manipulating date and time pass the test. Your reward is the lingering possibility of being fucked over by vendors who have failed the test.

https://azure.microsoft.com/en...

--
https://technet.microsoft.com/...

Re:Leap days are programming tests

[Trogre]

I'll just leave this here.

Extrapolate!

[wonkey_monkey]

if we extrapolate backwards, we can find that early Earth had a day that lasted just 6.5 hours.

How simplistic is such a backwards extrapolation?

https://xkcd.com/605/ (most of you won't even need to click the link, I'm sure)

If a day is 6.5h...

[walkermc20]

...then dinosaurs would "weigh" around 4.5% less than they should at today's gravity. Totally explains why they all died...as the earth started slowing, they eventually became too heavy to survive and all sank into the earth to become fossils. Quick! Get me some paper! I'm publishing a new textbook!

Whiplash

[thegarbz]

I was just thinking that the new owners cleaned up a bit, and we hadn't seen this abusive clickbaiter in a while. Alas, not so.

Whiplash please check out StartsWithABang's stats.
0 posts on Slashdot
500+ attempted submissions.
125 submissions actually made it to the front page.
100% of submissions are links to his own blog on forbes and previously medium.
Nearly all of his slashdot submissions have comments that are primarily complaints about his garbage posts, clickbait summaries, incorrect science, and the fact he uses slashdot as a personal advertising platform.

I'm not asking you to do anything about it other than read his previous submission comments and draw your own conclusions.