Is there a discontinuity between the Orbit of the Earth and the Gregorian calendar ?
If someone was born on June 4th, 1950 at 12:00 PM, would that person be exactly 57 years old on June 4th, 2007 at 12:00 PM? or is there some type of gain or loss in chronological age?
I would suspect that since Kepler's Law states:
The second law: "A line joining a planet and the sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time."
That area of the elipse is conserved, causing slowing and speeding-up of the Earth around the Sun. Wouldn't this cause a descrepency in our archaeic calander system?
2007-06-04 01:02:56 · 6 answers · asked by BIGDAWG 4 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
There is no discontinuity. First of all, a discontinuity means a sudden change, a break or gap. Perhaps you mean "discrepancy".
Secondly, even though the Earth's speed varies during the year, it still gets back to the same position after a year. For most practical purposes, a year is a constant period of time. There are small variations of a few milliseconds a year; these are due to precession of the orbit .
The tropical year is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 45 seconds. In your example, the person's age would be 50 tropical years and 46 seconds, plus 33 leap seconds since 1958. You could also add about 6 seconds for "time adjustments" during 1950 to 1958; this is a complicated topic that I'm not prepared to research right now.
Nevertheless, the person is still exactly 50 "nominal" years old.
2007-06-04 03:11:24 · answer #1 · answered by morningfoxnorth 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Well since the earth repeats the same orbit every year, the speeding up and slowing has already been factored in to the time interval of our year. Since there is no friction the orbit will continue as it always has varying ever so slightly. But there is a discrepancy in our time system. I think a years is actually 364 days and 20 hours long. So over a period of 57 years... 57 x 4 hours = 228 Hours not accounted for... 228 hours / 24 = 9.5 days
The person would actually be about 1/36.5 years older then they think they are...
2007-06-04 01:22:40 · answer #2 · answered by mattdecour13 2 · 0⤊ 1⤋
There is a slight discrepancy, yes. Scientists frequently add "Leap Seconds" to adjust for the discrepancy, but it is very slight in human terms.
The 'speeding up and slowing down' you refer to are fractions of a percent as far as the earth is concerned, due to the fact that our orbit is a very nearly circular (only slightly eccentric) ellipse. The more out of round an orbit is, the more you would notice this discrepancy in time keeping, but it would tend to average out since the repeating orbits are identical. Did that make sense?
2007-06-04 01:18:56 · answer #3 · answered by eggman 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It probably would, but we just go by year to year and don't get involved with the age of person according to Kepler's Law because it would be to confusing.
2007-06-04 01:12:21 · answer #4 · answered by Memere RN/BA 7 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Kepler's Law, Kepler's Law !...Our solar system is only part of the time and Mass clock!...( Just a small inner gear in a over all bigger Relative motion clock ) Mass in time.
2007-06-04 02:42:10 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 2⤋
No; the total length of the year is still the total length of the year.
2007-06-04 01:17:59 · answer #6 · answered by poorcocoboiboi 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋