The Earth fully rotates in 23 hours and 56 minutes. Where do those extra four minutes go??
I know the answer is supposedly leap day, but I still don’t understand it from a daily time perspective.
I have to be up early for my job, which right now sucks because it’s dark out that early. So every day I’ve been checking my weather app to see when the sun is going to rise, and every day its a minute or two earlier because we’re coming out of winter. But how the heck does that work if there’s a missing four minutes every night?? Shouldn’t the sun be rising even earlier, or later? And how does it not add up to the point where noon is nighttime??
It hurts my head so much please help me understand.
In: Earth Science
By the time the Earth has completed one rotation it has moved a little bit on its orbit around the Sun (about 1/365th of the full circle). So the Sun is now at a slightly different angle and the Earth needs to turn a bit more to face it exactly the same way as one rotation ago. It takes about four extra minutes.
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