Hello once again. Sorry about the delay in the posting. So...I gonna have to get used to start writing 2013 instead of 2012. Speaking of years, let's talk about leap years.
We live in a world where there is 365 days in a year, a number that refuses to be divided evenly. And why is it that every 4 years or so, February gains an extra day? What kind of crazy universe do we live in? It all started when we found out that if we made our calendars 365 days per year, the seasons would slowly drift out of sync with the calendar, and eventually, winter will be in June! Then, we found out that if we chose 366 days per year, the seasons will still drift out of sync, just in the opposite way.
Then we found out that a year is actually 365.25 days. But we can't add a ".25" of a day in a calendar. So we chose to add an extra day every 4 years. But this is still a bit too often. So every century is not a leap year anymore. So the years 2000, 1900, 1800 and the other centuries are not leap years anymore even though they're divisible by 4.
But this still leaves the calendar ever so slightly off, by about 1 day off per 400 years. So a new rule was added. If a skipped century is divisible by 400, then that century will be a leap year. This leaves the calendar still so slightly off, by a rate of about 1 day off per 8500 years. But the calendar makers said "....well....close enough." Thank god for that.
But some mathematicians say that in the near future, we will create a calendar that will be perfectly aligned. Tough luck says the universe. The moon is actually making a "day-slowing" effect that is making the days longer in duration. So...no epic perfect calendar after all...
Interesting fact of the day: The entire internet (only the electrons that run it, not the chips and boards, hardware and all that stuff) weighs around 50 grams, or about the weight of a strawberry.
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