Thursday, January 1, 2009

Happy New Year

I hear fireworks going off around San Francisco right now, while my parents are in the living room watch the countdown on TV. None of the countdowns are actually in sync with the time I have on the computer, which is synchronized with an online time server. Regardless, it's fun having countdowns being broadcasted, about 10 or 20 seconds apart.

I was thinking about time zones. One of my Grandma's friends from Honolulu came to visit her yesterday, and the visit made me remember Hawaii is 2 hours different from the GMT-08:00 Pacific Time Zone I am living in. That would mean part of the world is still in 2008 right now.

Still more, the Earth's orbit around the Sun lasts for 365 1/4 days. So I would think that means technically, the Earth is still in 2008 in terms of it's orbit, even though we humans say it's 2009 already.

Hmm...


1 comment:

  1. About a year being 365 1/4 days, I'm not sure if that statement is valid for last year, because 2008 was a leap year, which just made up for all the 1/4 days we had in the past 4 years. However, a year is not exactly 365 1/4 days, so our countdown would still be a few seconds off for the actual beginning of a new revolution around the sun.

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