The New Year

A new year begins on January 1. We welcome it with celebrations and fireworks. Some people make New Year's resolutions and set new goals. Others look ahead to the new year with some apprehension: What will it bring? What will I, what will we experience? But what exactly is a year?

To understand this, let’s first take a trip to the seaside. We look west. It is still light, and the sun is still shining warmly from the sky. But it is getting closer and closer to the western horizon. Then it looks as if it is sinking into the sea.

A short time later, it is no longer visible. Dusk sets in, and the dark night falls. We know the sun will rise again in the east the next morning. But how does it get there? What does it do at night?

In ancient times, the Greeks believed that the gods Helios or Apollo crossed the sky in a sun chariot. At night, they returned to the east to begin their journey again in the morning.

Until around 500 years ago, people also believed that the Earth was the centre of the world. They imagined it as a disc with the sky arching over it. The Sun, Moon and stars moved across the sky in their orbits. In some mysterious way, the Sun returned to its starting point by morning during the night.

Today we know that the Earth is a sphere. It constantly spins on its axis and orbits the Sun. The Sun is much larger than the Earth, very far away, and unimaginably hot.

The sun radiates heat and light into space, and some of it reaches Earth. Without the sun, it would be pitch-dark and freezing cold here.

It looks as though the Sun is moving across the sky. In reality, however, the Earth turns beneath the Sun. In the morning, we see the Sun in the east, at noon in the south, and in the evening in the west. After sunset comes a period we call twilight. In the morning, twilight begins some time before sunrise.

The sun’s rays only ever shine on the half of the Earth that faces the sun. The other half lies in darkness. We call the time when the sun’s rays light everything up day, and the time of darkness night.

We often refer to day and night together as a “full day,” or simply as a “day.” We divide a full day into 24 hours. Each hour consists of 60 minutes, and each minute of 60 seconds.

It takes Earth 365 days and six hours to orbit the Sun. We call this period a year. Because a year is six hours longer than 365 days, we add an extra day every fourth year. That year then has 366 days. We call it a leap year. February, which normally has 28 days, is one day longer in a leap year.