system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Is the need for leap days and leap seconds because the second is actually too long? If so, could we fix it?

Could we theoretically fix the situation - eliminating the need for such "leap" time periods?  

Could we practically fix it?
gpt
Leap days and Leap seconds are very different things.

Leap days come from a combination of two celestial movements. We measure time by the rotation of the Earth around its axis (days) and by the revolution of the Earth around the Sun (Years). These two movements are not synced to each other. There is not an integer number of Earth's rotations per revolution. This leads to a 'remainder' of about a quarter of a day. So every 4 years we need to add a day so that our calendar stays matched up to the right season. We can't change the rotational speed of the Earth or its orbital speed. So there is nothing we can do to make days and years match up to eliminate the leap year.

The leap second is caused because atomic time is extremely accurate, and time measured by the Earth's rotation is not as accurate. Earth's rotational speed varies ever so slightly due to Earth quakes, volcanic eruptions and other large scale events. Eventually, this causes our extremely non-varying atomic clock to no longer read 'noon' when the sun is at the highest point in the sky. So every so often we have to add or subtract a second from the atomic clock to make sure that it matches up with time as measured by the Earth's rotation. 

So no, neither of these can be fixed practically. They are a result of using different systems to measure time that don't quite match up perfectly with each other.