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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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Answers. 10 helpful answers below.

  • 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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  • by Grandma Roses - my avatar is my real dog on March 29th, 2006

    Grandma Roses - my avatar is my real dog

    It's lost in the dryer, along with all those missing socks.

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  • by Im Alec has abandoned this account on November 10th, 2009

    Im Alec has abandoned this account

    The period of 23hrs 56 minutes is the Sideral day, the time it takes the Earth to rotate so the stars return to the same point in the sky. The period of 24 hours is the solar day, the time it takes for the Earth to rotate so the Sun returns to the same point in the sky. Since the Earth is rotating round the Sun, the Earth has to rotate a little bit further at the end of the day to compensate for the movement round the Sun.

    There are therefore 364 sideral days in the year and 365 solar days in the year. The extra day in the solar year is caused by the Earth's rotation around the Sun. This can be interpreted (for this purpose only) as the Sun going round the Earth. So every year the Earth spins 364 times on its axis /and/ the sun goes round it once.

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  • by iwnit on November 10th, 2009

    iwnit

    "A day of exactly 86,400 SI seconds is used in astronomy as a unit of time.
    For a given planet, there are two types of day defined in astronomy:
    - sidereal day - a single rotation of a planet with respect to the distant stars
    - mean solar day - average time of a single rotation of a planet with respect to its star.

    For Earth, the sidereal day is about 3 minutes 56 seconds shorter than the solar day. In fact, the Earth spins 366 times about its axis during a 365-day year, because the Earth's revolution about the Sun removes one apparent turn of the Sun about the Earth."
    Source and further information:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day

    Further information:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_year
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_year

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  • by MoiBein on November 10th, 2009

    MoiBein

    The stellar day is 23h 56m and a solar day is 24h. This is why the stars (constellations) are in a different equinox each year. The 'Day' was lost.

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  • by Anonymous on October 18th, 2006

    Anonymous

    The answer is to do with the difference between a sideral day (time taken to revolve once relative to the positions of the stars) and a solar day (time taken to revolve once relative to the position of the Sun).

    The full details are here
    http://www.astronomynotes.com/nakedeye/s7.htm

    So no need to look in the dryer (or the Bible).

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  • by JackNicklaus on April 26th, 2006

    JackNicklaus

    Where did you get this 23 hours and 56 minutes in a day figure? Allowing for leap years, the average days in a year is 365.25. Every so often the clocks must be adjusted a second or two to keep our Earth bound clocks in sync with the Sun. Most of our clocks aren't that accurate and we adjust them once or twice a year to compensate for their inaccuracies.

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  • by xopurplefizzox on March 30th, 2006

    xopurplefizzox

    http://snopes.com/religion/lostday.htm

    Read that article.

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  • by Muhammed on November 10th, 2009

    Muhammed

    God will give you the answer . check this link
    http://www.speed-light.info/

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  • by - MojoThunder - on November 10th, 2009

    - MojoThunder -

    get off the pipe

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