If the Earth actually takes 365 1/4 days to revolve around the sun, doesn't that mean every new year begins around 6:00 AM instead of midnight on January 1st?
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Anti-Semantic - Quaerens Intellectum
ANSWERS: 3
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Well if you follow that logic, the first year begins at midnight, the second at 6 AM, the third at 12 AM, and so forth, and every 4 years we're back to midnight again. Thus the need for leap year. But the Earth's orbital period isn't EXACTLY 365 1/4 days, it's about 365.256 days, so the leap year rule is pretty complicated -- we skip one every 100 years, put it back in every 400 years, etc. Somebody messed up the orbit, but we're not pointing any fingers of course.
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Plus, it'd be no fun celebrating new years at 6am. We're party animals, we like our midnight :-)
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Sorry -- this was meant to be a comment, not an answer.
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