RE: February 30th 2000

BZZZT!  Thank-you for playing.  (Although you are getting warmer.)  The
purpose of leap years is to keep the equinoxes (equinoxi?) & solstices
fixed.  This is important for the agrarian & hunter-gatherer segments of
society (which used to be almost everybody), since planting, breeding and
migrations are sensitive to these things.  Many (most?) religions also had
feasts similarly tied.

But the length of day is dependent upon orbital _geometry_ (ie:  The angle
between the Earth's axis and a line segement between the centers of the
Earth & Sun), not its _position_ (ie: distance to the Sun or location in the
orbital elipse).

Leap seconds are completely unrelated, since they are designed to keep the
Sun overhead at noon, which was the definition of a day before the railroads
got involved.

Nathan

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Svensson [mailto:[e-mail]]
Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2000 4:04 AM
To: Richard B. Johnson
Cc: Daniel Lafraia; [e-mail]; [e-mail]
Subject: Re: February 30th 2000

This thread has already gone on too long and I'm sorry to contribute to
it, but this is not correct. The leap seconds handle the correlation
between astronomical time and utc (so that the sun appears in the same
position on the sky at the correct time). Leap days handle the correlation
of our orbital position around the sun to dates. 

Peter
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