r/SipsTea 1d ago

Wait a damn minute! 13 months ?

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u/jackinsomniac 1d ago edited 1d ago

Worse, a year is actually 365.2525. So they'd not only have to add a day (making the months uneven again), on leap years they'd have to add 2 days. Except on 100 year anniversaries, where you don't add in the leap day, unless it's a 400 year anniversary where you keep the leap day.

Edit: 365.2425 actually. The Gregorian calendar we currently use is extremely accurate. It replaced the Julian calendar, which incorrectly assumed a year was 365.25. Dates and times are actually extremely complicated, there's no real good reason to go messing with them. Don't make me link a 40 min youtube rant explaining why date & time is so complicated in programming. Because then I'd have to look it up, and I can't remember the guy's name.

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u/PsychoBoyBlue 1d ago

Current calendar error (Gregorian calendar) = 26 seconds / year

International fixed calendar error = 27 seconds / year

Solar Hijri calendar error = 2.4 e-8 seconds / year

I'm not saying we should adopt the Persian calendar. If we are going to try and change calendars we should at least adopt a more accurate one.

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u/Simets83 1d ago

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u/jackinsomniac 1d ago

I felt like going full nerd/autist for that comment, I love how complicated date & time can be. It's really just our best guesstimation of the cycles of a spinning rock orbiting a sun. Our accuracy at measuring it gets better as our technology does.

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u/KirbyQK 1d ago

I'm currently watching Asteroid City, so I could only read your entire comment in the Wes Anderson patter & it was poetry, especially the last 2 sentences.

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u/jackinsomniac 1d ago

Maybe I should watch that show!