If there is one extra day in every four years then why do the seasons never change?

Question

Why is it that after 1460 years all the seasons would not have changed places and rotated back to their original place as that would amount to 365 extra days?

Answer 1

one sidereal year or the time required for the earth to complete one rotation around the sun is 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes and 46 seconds. or about one fourth of a day . we only count 365 days as a year so every fourth tear we count 366 days as a year which makes up for the four times we dropped the fourth of a year. we are not gaining in time but just catching up in time.

Answer 2

For the very reason that there IS an extra day, because a year (in terms of the Earth orbiting the Sun) is in fact 365 1/4 days.

Answer 3

in school i learned that the earth can actually get off track with seasons,

that's why sometimes it may still rain in the summer which happens a lot

and that's why sometimes it may still snow in April,

its all possible

Answer 4

It's not an "extra" day, it's a day added in to make up the discrepancy there would otherwise be - If it wasn't added in, then the seasons really would change in the way that you describe, only they'd rotate in the other direction.

Answer 5

they probably did but nobody is 1460 yrs old to tell us that it did... LOL

Answer 6

well thats the whole point isnt it?

Answer 7

The seasons are just dependent on where the Earth is with respect to the Sun. We've created the calender to help us track that, but it's slightly inaccurate, and every once in a while we have to correct it... precisely so that what you described -doesn't- happen.

Hope that clears it up.  : )

Answer 8

That extra day is PRECISELY so that the seasons would stay put. The earth's orbit around the sun is not an exact, whole number of days.

Answer 9

The earth revolves around the sun (one year) every 365 1/4 days.  Every four years we add a full day to wrap up those four quarter days.  I believe every 400 years (it just happened recently, I think) we actually skip the leap year extra day to make up for the fraction of the quarter day we ignore every other year.  So, basically, the leap year calculation is deigned to avoid the very problem you're asking about.

Edit:  The duration of a solar year is slightly less than 365.25 days. Years that are evenly divisible by 100 are not leap years, unless they are also evenly divisible by 400, in which case they are leap years.  2000 was, in fact, a leap year.  None of us will probably see a non-leap-year-leap-year.

Answer 10

It takes Earth three hundred & sixty five & a quarter days to go around the Sun.

So they add one extra day every four years to catch up.

Answer 11

One year consists of 365 and one quarter  days. So for our convenience we add this quarter days for four years and adding it to correct the earth rotation with reference to the Sun.Therefore there can not be any difference in season.if  we do not correct the quarter day in four years regularly then your doubt is correct.The season will change.

Answer 12

The extra day is to make up for the fact that the earth's journey around the sun does not take exactly 365 days. Without the extra day the seasons would gradually change.