Eli5 what is the point in leap years ,like why do we have them?
In: 3
A year is supposed to be the time it takes the earth to go all the way around the sun. That’s *about* 365 days but not exactly. It’s really more like 365.25 days. So, if you don’t do something, every 4 years or so you’ll end up being “off” by a day. By “off” I mean the position you expect the sun to be on January 1 now happens on January 2.
This matters because, if you do it long enough, your seasons get totally out of whack. You end up having Christmas in the middle of the summer and skiing in August (in the northern hemisphere). This wreaks havoc on seasonal industries that work by calendar, schools and other intermittent schedules, etc.
So every 4 years we stick in an extra day to keep everything mostly lined up.
We occasionally do “leap seconds” to account for the rest. You never really notice because it’s so small and most of our devices are synchronized by the GPS network now anyway.
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