ROANOKE, Va. – It’s that time again! We look at the calendar, expecting 28 days in February and *BAM*, that extra day 29th shows up.
Leap Day is a necessary part of keeping up with the artificial calendar we’ve created. Let’s explain.
It takes Earth 365.24 days to make a complete orbit around the sun. Earth’s orbit is elliptical - not a perfect circle - and it orbits at an angle of roughly 23.5° relative to that big orange fiery ball.
Our calendars, however, assume that a year is exactly 365 days. In order to correct for the imbalance that our time construct has created, we simply add a day every four years.
2024 is a leap year. 2028 will be the next, and so on and so forth.