BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy June 30th is an extra-long day

The day never seems long enough to fit everything in. But tomorrow, the day - not the daylight hours, but the actual day - is longer. Unfortunately, only by 1 second. (But doesn't every second count?)

You know that we have leap years because a year is somewhat more than 365 days, and a leap year every four years keeps the calendar in synch with the seasons. Well, the day is based on the Earth's rotation. And that keeps getting slower. But it doesn't get slower very fast. In the past it wasn't even important. However these days making precision astronomical measurements does need the accuracy. So every now and then, we get a leap second.

The fossil coral record shows that 350 million years ago a day-night cycle was less than 23 hours long. So if you find it hard to get everything done in a day, it's a good thing you didn't live in the early Carboniferous period.

But there would have been some compensation for the shorter day. The years were just as long, so you would have had an extra twenty days a year.

If you had an extra twenty days and could choose how to use them, what would you do?

Hi there Mona,

I would dedicate them as READING DAYS ONLY where, hopefully they could be spread out fairly evenly throughout the year and I could sit in my garden on warm barmy days with mint juleps and such and read, read and or read!

There would be 10 of these events as each would have a day attached for thinking about what I had read and discussing and all and all with convivial company of like-minded people.

Well, that's one option. I am sure there would be others if I thought a bit more, but, shaking my head as I write, I have to say reading takes top position.

Of course, it begs the question ... I wonder if I would have liked the books they had in the library or the book stores then?

Cheers now