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by WHITE BEAR on March 27th, 2006

WHITE BEAR

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On Earth, a day is 23 hours 56 minutes long. If we divide 365 conventional 24-hour days by this figure, we get 366 Earth days (367 in a leap year). So where is this missing day?

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  • by Nulinvoid on October 18th, 2006

    Nulinvoid

    There is no missing day. The calculation you are using (I have seen this before) is akin to using a Metric scale to determine how many inches are in a foot, without doing the necessary conversion from metrics to inches/feet. It's faulty mathmatics. The 23 hour, 56 minute day is measured by stellar positions, which is actually more acurate that solar because the distance frome the stars allows for less error. The Earth revolves around the sun in an eliptical pattern, and so measuring a day by the sun's postion in the sky would be slightly different in one position in it's orbit as compared to a different postion in it's orbit. This is more pronounced than the stellar measurment because of the close proximity if the sun. But this all actually has nothing whatsoever to do with the mathmatical mistake in the question. The "missing day" question has a fatal flaw, in that it compares two distinctly different standards of measurement for a day and then performs calculations on them assuming they are both the same after already stating they are, in fact, different! You simply can't take a year of 365 24 hour days and divide it by 23 hour, 56 minute days and expect to come up with 365 days! That's the same as taking 365 twelve inch feet, then dividing the 365 feet by eleven inches! Where did the 365 extra inches come from?- You just "created" them with faulty math! You can't make calculations on any sort of measurements until you settle (or convert) all of the measurements involved into one common standard. Simply put, there IS no missing day! For more info on how we measure time, and why our calendar is slightly messed up and has to be adjusted from time to time: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0002063.html

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    • Wow! You sure told him. (or her)

      J and B

      by J and B on November 10th, 2009

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