“I was amazed!
» With stars in his eyes, astrophysicist Hervé Dole remembers this day when a colleague showed him “the small village, a few kilometers from the Rome observatory, where Pope Gregory XIII decided to align perfectly well the calendar of the seasons on the astronomical one.
We were in the 16th century, and since that date almost one year in four has 366 days and not 365. This is the case, in particular, of this year 2024. The approximately 40,000 French people born on February 29 will therefore celebrate their real birthday this Thursday.
How to explain this calendar oddity?
The reason is simple: the Earth does not revolve around the Sun in precisely 365 days, but in 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 46 seconds, or 365.2422 days.
“It’s these decimal places that are problematic,” explains Denis Savoie, astronomer at Universcience and the Paris Observatory.
Subscribe
Already subscribed?
To log in