Though we all have differences, there’s one commonality that has prevailed for all of humanity: we are all floating on a rock, flying through outer space at over a million miles an hour.
Thanks to the rapid advancement of technology in the past century, we can observe much more of the universe than we ever thought possible.
The scale and sheer size of the universe make it impossible to truly learn everything, but it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
Here's what's happening in space this week.
We're now in the second month of 2024! It felt like January just flew by, right? February, on the other hand, has an extra day this year! That's right - it's a leap year.
Every four years, February gets an extra day, meaning we'll have 29 days this month and 366 days in the year.
We're likely all familiar with leap years by now, especially if you happened to be born on a leap day, but why exactly do they occur?
Unlike daylight saving time, which was implemented during World War I to conserve fuel and power, the leap year has a scientific origin.
According to NASA, it takes our planet around 365 days and six hours (365.242190 days) to complete an orbit around the Sun. This is known as a solar year. It takes the Earth 24 hours to complete a rotation on its axis. So, our year is technically not an exact number of days.
Typically, we round the days of the year down to 365. To make up for the leftover time, we add one day to the calendar year approximately every four years.
If we didn't implement a leap day, the dates of important events that happen annually would constantly shift to later in the year.
While most people will say a leap year is every four years, there are some exceptions. Because Earth's orbit around the sun is slightly less than exactly 365 and six hours (5 hours 48 minutes and 56 seconds), about 45 extra minutes are added to every leap year cycle.
It doesn't seem like much time, but over 400 years, it adds up to almost three days. For this reason, years divisible by 100 do not have leap days unless they're also divisible by 400.
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