Editing 2897: Light Leap Years
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The joke hinges on the fact that in most common usages years have a variable length, with the {{w|Gregorian calendar}}'s leap year system — adding a day every four years to align the calendar year with the astronomical year — being the current civil standard in most of the world. A {{w|light year}}, defined in astronomy as the distance light travels in a vacuum over a Julian year (365.25 days), remains constant at 9,460,730,472,580.8 km, unaffected by the Gregorian calendar's leap years. However, the comic amusingly suggests that leap years lengthen light years, necessitating database updates for astronomical distances. | The joke hinges on the fact that in most common usages years have a variable length, with the {{w|Gregorian calendar}}'s leap year system — adding a day every four years to align the calendar year with the astronomical year — being the current civil standard in most of the world. A {{w|light year}}, defined in astronomy as the distance light travels in a vacuum over a Julian year (365.25 days), remains constant at 9,460,730,472,580.8 km, unaffected by the Gregorian calendar's leap years. However, the comic amusingly suggests that leap years lengthen light years, necessitating database updates for astronomical distances. | ||
| − | The title text imaginatively claims {{w|Pope Gregory XIII}}, who introduced the Gregorian calendar in 1582, inadvertently affected the length of the light-year. This is not due to 1582 being a leap-year (it was | + | The title text imaginatively claims {{w|Pope Gregory XIII}}, who introduced the Gregorian calendar in 1582, inadvertently affected the length of the light-year. This is not due to 1582 being a leap-year (it was ''not'' a leap-year), but because of the calendar days that also had to be skipped to remove the timing error built up when using the less correct Julian method of prior leap-years. Those adopting that system in 1582 had to shorten this year by ten days. {{w|List of adoption dates of the Gregorian calendar by country|Later adopters}} may have had to shorten the year that they ''did'' change by up to 13 days, i.e. up to three extra days for every four whole centuries spent on the 'wrong' calendar. |
A year of effectively 355 days, rather than 365, would therefore lead (by this comic's premise) to potential misunderstandings/misapplications of distance approaching 3%, leading to "navigational chaos" and the loss of "Papal starships." This satirizes the significant historical impact of calendar reforms on navigation and measurement, despite the anachronism, as the light-year wasn't defined until 1838 and the concept of a finite speed of light only emerged in 1676 with {{w|Rømer's determination of the speed of light}}, whilst practical starships (papal or otherwise) that would usefully rely upon light-year measurements, have yet to be developed (on Earth, at least, the only place where such light-year measurements might originate). However, navigational chaos ''has'' been a cause of maritime shipwrecks, such as the notable {{w|Scilly naval disaster of 1707}} in which four ships were lost and over 1,400 sailors died due to navigational errors. | A year of effectively 355 days, rather than 365, would therefore lead (by this comic's premise) to potential misunderstandings/misapplications of distance approaching 3%, leading to "navigational chaos" and the loss of "Papal starships." This satirizes the significant historical impact of calendar reforms on navigation and measurement, despite the anachronism, as the light-year wasn't defined until 1838 and the concept of a finite speed of light only emerged in 1676 with {{w|Rømer's determination of the speed of light}}, whilst practical starships (papal or otherwise) that would usefully rely upon light-year measurements, have yet to be developed (on Earth, at least, the only place where such light-year measurements might originate). However, navigational chaos ''has'' been a cause of maritime shipwrecks, such as the notable {{w|Scilly naval disaster of 1707}} in which four ships were lost and over 1,400 sailors died due to navigational errors. | ||
