![]() ![]() If we want to look at climate records accurately, we should really have leap years every four years – plus a super-leap-year of 367 days every century.”Įven if we wanted to follow the tropical year, our calendar could do with a recalculation. “And perihelion is slowly drifting forwards in the calendar. ![]() “The annual temperature cycle has been dominated by the anomalistic year,” explains Duncan Steel, who has worked with the US space agency in assessing the threat of asteroid collisions. While we follow the solar year (known as the tropical year in astronomy, it’s the time between equinoxes – the complete cycle of seasons), there’s also the fractionally longer anomalistic year: the 365-and-a-bit days from the point of the Earth’s orbit that’s nearest the Sun (known as the perihelion) to the next time it reaches that point. And it’s all to do with how you define the year. Its supporters still aim for worldwide adoption in 2023.īut one Nasa space scientist claims that there should be more leap days. And the 364-day World Calendar, popular within the United Nations in the fifties, included a year-end holiday with no day of the week attached called ‘ Worldsday’, plus an additional ‘Leapyear Day’ occurring between June 30 and May 1 every four years. The camera pioneer had its extra month, Sol, sandwiched between June and July. George Eastman, the founder of Kodak, adopted a company-wide 13-month calendar until 1989. In 1793, post-revolutionary France introduced ten-day weeks. It’s far from the first time that a new calendar has been mooted. “It wouldn’t be a bad deal to get an extra week off at Christmas time,” reasons Hanke. Leap days would be scrapped, with the remaining 1.24219 days instead accumulated into a neat ‘leap-week’ package added onto the end of December, every five or six years. A ‘four-quarter 30-30-31 pattern’ would be introduced (meaning two months of 30 days, followed by one of 31, repeated three times) and a 364-day year. Alongside Dick Henry, professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins, Hanke wants to introduce the Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar (HHPC). “Sales will look like they’re down when they’re not you get a lot of noise in the financial system,” Hanke adds. It meant a shortfall was sure to follow – the company would be shorn of a week’s revenue, all because of a calendar quirk. When Apple announced record quarterly revenue in early 2017, it followed a leap year: the additional week inflated profits. “It’s quite random, and it fouls up analysts.” “They have to insert an extra week every four years,” says Hanke. February 29 can catch out businesses too, with the extra day often stretching a traditional 13-week financial quarter into a 14-week one. “Every month is assumed to be 30 days long, the year 360 days.” Simply put, those receiving interest payments are being short changed by the calendar.īut it’s not just banks. “For corporate and municipal bonds, the 30/360 rule is used,” explains Steve Hanke, professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins. According to one academic who wants to scrap our calendar for good, it’s a dated system which costs the US $130bn a year. ![]()
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