Scientist Shows There Are Two Ways to Measure a Day on Earth – We Use The Longer One – ScienceAlert

How long does it take Earth to complete a 360-degree rotation? Not quite 24 hours, it turns out — it’s precisely 23 hours and 56 minutes.
But because Earth is constantly moving along its orbit around the sun, a different point on the planet faces the sun directly at the end of that 360-degree spin. For the sun to reach the exact same position in the sky, Earth has to rotate 1 degree further.
That’s how humans have chosen to measure days: not by the Earth’s exact rotation, but the position of t…

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