Today is a leap day, the extra day
added in to leap years. Since the current leap system was introduced in 1752,
there have been 62 leap years, therefore 62 extra days...that's 2 entire
months. And since 1991 (the year I was born, and probably the best year of the
90's), there have been 6 leap years. Assuming I live to 80, (lets make it 81 to
land on an even year, 2072), I will have lived through 20 leap years - so
that's not quite a month, I have to get to 113 if I wanted a month's worth of
leap days in my life (although by then, that could be quite achievable with
modern technology, and general increase in life expectancy). I also think leap
days should be publics holidays, celebrating the awesomeness of them, but also
since it's an extra day...why would you want to work?
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This was
the very first image Google supplied
me with when I searched for 2072...am I wrong to expect lasers? *PEW PEW PEW* |
Did you know there's also a leap
second? Whereas the leap day is associated with the Earth's orbit of
the Sun, a leap second is based on the Earth's axial rotation. They first came
about in 1972 when some smart guy from the International Earth Rotation and Reference
Systems Service realised that
sometimes the Earth spins a little slower than usual, and if it happens enough,
we would lose a whole second of time! So to make up for it, every now then, an
extra second is added into time. Since then, there have been 25 leap seconds
announce, including the next one scheduled for June 30 2012 UTC
(GMT). What can you do in 25 seconds? Count to 25 (or 50 if you count twice as
fast), 1/4 cook 2 minute noodles, play this game, read a page of a
book, get undressed, defuse a bomb with 00:25 on the timer. So whilst the leap
second seems useless, it really ads up.
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Or you
could fry and egg...
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Interesting fact: did
you know that if all the months were 28 days long, there would be enough spare
days for an extra 29-day month. I call it 'Awesomember'
Chris
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