Editing 2897: Light Leap Years
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==Explanation== | ==Explanation== | ||
− | The comic features [[Cueball]] and [[Ponytail]] updating astronomical distances in a database. The caption imagines a world in which {{w|leap year}}s, which add an extra day | + | The comic features [[Cueball]] and [[Ponytail]] updating astronomical distances in a database. The caption imagines a world in which {{w|leap year}}s, which add an extra day making the year 366 days long instead of 365, purportedly extend light-years by 0.27% due to the additional day (366/365 = 1.0027397...). This adjustment ostensibly reduces the number of light years to celestial bodies like Alpha Centauri by a corresponding percentage — a relatively small amount, but one that corresponds to approximately 730 times the average Earth-sun distance. The comic was released about a week before the leap day of 2024, a leap year. |
The joke hinges on the fact that in most common usages years have a variable length, with the {{w|Gregorian calendar}}'s leap year system — adding a day every four years to align the calendar year with the astronomical year — being the current civil standard in most of the world. A {{w|light year}}, defined in astronomy as the distance light travels in a vacuum over a Julian year (365.25 days), remains constant at 9,460,730,472,580.8 km, unaffected by the Gregorian calendar's leap years. However, the comic amusingly suggests that leap years lengthen light years, necessitating database updates for astronomical distances. | The joke hinges on the fact that in most common usages years have a variable length, with the {{w|Gregorian calendar}}'s leap year system — adding a day every four years to align the calendar year with the astronomical year — being the current civil standard in most of the world. A {{w|light year}}, defined in astronomy as the distance light travels in a vacuum over a Julian year (365.25 days), remains constant at 9,460,730,472,580.8 km, unaffected by the Gregorian calendar's leap years. However, the comic amusingly suggests that leap years lengthen light years, necessitating database updates for astronomical distances. |