After the New Year celebrations, you might wonder if 2024 has an extra day. Well, you are right; 2024 is a bit special because it has one more day in February. The next thing that comes to mind is, Why this twist in the calendar? It’s all about keeping Earth’s clock in sync with the sun. Earth takes a bit more than 365 days to complete its dance around the sun. So, every four years, we add an extra day, called leap day, to make sure our calendars match the sky.
So, 2024 is indeed a leap year, and February has the 29th day in it. Now, let’s explore the fascinating world of leap years and understand their true significance.
What Is a Leap Year?
According to NASA, it takes approximately 365.25 days for Earth to orbit the Sun-a solar year. We usually round the days in a calendar year to 365. To make up for the missing partial day, we add one day to our calendar approximately every four years. That is a leap year.
What is the reason behind the existence of leap years?
The space agency mentions that a year is the amount of time it takes a planet to orbit its star once. A day is the amount of time it takes a planet to finish one rotation on its axis. It takes Earth approximately 365 days and 6 hours to orbit the Sun. It takes Earth approximately 24 hours-1 day-to rotate on its axis. So, our year is not an exact number of days.
Because of that, most years, we round the days in a year down to 365. However, that leftover piece of a day doesn’t disappear. To make sure we count that extra part of a day, we add one day to the calendar approximately every four years.
Do other planets experience leap years like Earth?
Leap years occur because a planet’s orbit around the Sun (year) and its rotation on its axis (day) are not perfectly aligned. This phenomenon is not unique to Earth but applies to almost every other planet in our solar system.
Take Mars, for instance; it has more leap years than regular years. A year on Mars consists of 668 sols, or Martian days. However, it takes 668.6 sols for Mars to complete one orbit around the Sun. Therefore, occasionally adding a sol is necessary to synchronize the calendar. Over a 10-year period, four years would have 668 sols, while six years would be leap years with 669 sols.
