What would have happened if there was no leap year in the calendar?
Written by Sneh Chaudhry on February 27, 2024
Be it East or West, astronomers have always tried to improve the calendar. Regarding India’s Hindu Panchag or Hindu calendar, it is claimed that it never needed any reform and will not need any reform for the next several thousand years. But in Western countries, especially in Europe, the calendar has a different history.
Earlier it was broadly believed that the Earth takes 365 days to revolve around the Sun and hence the interval of the year was also kept at 365 days. But the Earth takes 365 and a quarter days to revolve around the Sun. This extra time is compensated by adding one more day every four years and such a year is called leap year.
This is the reason that this year the month of February will not be 28 days but 29 days. The need for reform of the calendar was first felt in ancient Rome. At that time, a calendar year based on the moon was 355 days long. The Romans noticed that their calendar was out of sync. To improve this, he first added another month named Mercedonius to the calendar every two years.
In 45 BC, Roman emperor Julius Caesar introduced the solar calendar, which was based on the calendar created in Egypt. One day was added to this every four years. With time people realized that the Earth does not revolve around the Sun in 365.25 days but it takes 365.24219 days. That means more improvements were needed.
In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII made a small change. He said that every four years, one day will be added in February, but the rule of leap year will not apply in every century year like 1700, 2100, etc. But that year should not be divided by 400. The improvement in this calendar was quite effective and even today it is used as the Gregorian calendar.
But what if there were no leap years? Gradually the coordination of all the seasons gets disturbed. Due to this, the Earth’s shortest day and longest day start falling on different days and a time comes when even the farmers are unable to guess the right time for their sowing the biggest thing is that according to the weather and the movement of the sun, the time of day changes. The dates would have changed.
