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urzu_seven t1_jd6tds4 wrote

Yes and no.

Yes (mostly) - the time, in absolute terms that the earth takes to complete one lap around the sun has been close to the same. Orbital period is determined by an objects distance from the sun. The Earths average distance from the sun has been basically the same since its formation, meaning its orbital period has been the same.

No - We typically measure years in number of days (roughly 365.25 right now) it takes for the Earth to complete one orbit. While the overall length of orbit in say, seconds has not changed, the number of days it takes HAS because the Earths rotation is slowing down. Billions of years ago it probably took less than 20 hours for the Earth to complete one rotation, aka one day. So the number of "days" in the year was greater, as each day was shorter.

So in raw time, yes, its basically the same. In terms of how many "days" it took? No, it used to be longer.

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Lirdon t1_jd6nqcn wrote

Year is what we define it to be. For us as humans it was easy to set a year relatively to the cycle of seasons. Only later that we found out that a year is how long it takes for the earth to go around the sun.

So you see, every planet has its own year, its own orbital period. Venus year is 255 earth days, what with it being closer to the sun.

Neptune being so far, it's year is as long as 165 earth years.

The reason we look at the age of the universe in time relative to us – to the earth year, is because it's much easier to conceptualize it, instead of spending time inventing a new unit of time.

Even speed on a galactic level we measure in the distance light travels in an earth year.

So, was a year different in different times?

actually... yeah, though not how you might think. Different calendars had slightly different day counts for years. For instance, old persian calendars had 360 days in a year. The old roman calendar – before the introduction of the Julian calendar was 304 days long. When transitioning to the Julian Calendar there was a transitional year with 445 days.

But when speaking of age of the universe, people refer to it as it is today – 365 days per year –> 24 hour per day –> 60 minute per hour –> 60 second per minute. a Second scientifically defined in relation to the frequency of a caesium 133 atom.

So the year one of the universe, is the same year you expirience today.

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rbv201 OP t1_jd96ih3 wrote

Thanks for the answer! The idea of the atom frequency as a constant (the same hourglass back then as now) is very interesting. Thanks again!

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Any-Growth8158 t1_jd93xxv wrote

I'm assuming you are talking about the orbital period of the Earth? Years do change as we change definitions of time, although these are small.

The Earth is actually moving very slowly away from the Sun, so years are getting a little longer, although the difference is pretty difficult to measure.

The Sun pushes the Earth away due to the solar wind, but this actually has very little effect. More important is the mass loss by the Sun via the solar wind (and fusion reactions). The Sun loses a mass of about 8 Earths per year. One site I saw said this has resulted in a net loss in velocity of 22 m/s over the life of the solar system--fairly insignificant to the current 29.78 km/s

If you go back far enough, then the Earth was involved in major collisions. These could have had great effect on the orbital period by (mostly) adding large amounts of mass.

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[deleted] t1_jd6mnvj wrote

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AmVpooperNow t1_jd6nd2r wrote

I think they mean how long it takes for the Earth to orbit.

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Antithesys t1_jd6nn7y wrote

> the Julian calendar that added June and July as months

Usually this piece of incorrect trivia is cited as July and August, but regardless, it was January and February that were added to the end of the calendar. July and August were always there but were renamed. And the Julian calendar didn't add or rename anything.

Oh, and the Julian calendar had leap years too. The Gregorian calendar didn't add leap years, it took some away.

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Perfect-Editor-5008 t1_jd6pc5p wrote

Time is a human construct. We have named a year to be the time it takes for 1 orbit of the sun. However every planets orbit is different in duration. Hence a "year" is different depending on what planet you are on. So say an orbit for a planet is 100 years in the way we look at time then the universe to them would only be 138 million "years" old.

You also need to remember that when we started keeping track of days and hours it would have been possible to break them up differently than we did. We could have had days with 57 "hours" in a day, 10 "days" to a month and so on.

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urzu_seven t1_jd6tm8j wrote

Time is not a human construct. Time exists whether we do or not. The labels we choose are constructs, but the underlying passage of time still occurs, whatever we label it.

Further some things, such as a year, are defined by external factors, namely the Earths orbit around the Sun. This does not change with the existence of humans. It is a known quantity. The orbital periods of other planets are indeed different, but thats not what is referred to by "a year", which is why you have to qualify in circumstances where thats what you want to talk about.

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Target880 t1_jd7e29x wrote

>We have named a year to be the time it takes for 1 orbit of the sun.

That is not the case. The year we base our calendar on is the one cycle in the season on earth. You can pick the time between March Equinox and next March Equinox. This is a tropical year

It is it and the average solar day we try to make a calendar from. because there is not an integer fraction between the you need to add leap years

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An obit around the sun relative to a star far away is a sidereal year. It differs from the tropical year by around 20 minutes. It adds up to around 1 day of change in 72 years so not a lot but very relevant if you, for example, do celestial navigation.

Over a long time it has a larger effect, Compare the day that typically zodiac and when the sun really is in the sky, there is a difference of around 20 days because of the 20 minutes difference over more than millennia.

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