Happy Equinoctial Point
Well we made it to Spring. The vernal equinox gives me a chance to stop and contemplate things like math and astrophysics and stuff, like how we've been able to calculate the exact moment when the center of the Sun crosses the plane of our planet’s equator.
The fact that we are on a planet that's knocked a little askew, and that this turvy top is moving--- always blows my mind. Until I forget and have to be reminded again. I don't feel the motion of earth's 67,000 mph rotation, or sense its tilt, (which seems crazy, but that's physics for you) and the daily sunrises and sunsets are so routine I barely give the earth's hustle any credit for them. It always seems like the sun is the one doing all the work. So I forget we're spinning on a crazy cosmic tilt-o-whirl.
With the world so divided these days, it's too bad our shared astronomy doesn't bring us more together. The equinox is a great equalizer in the sense that it means the length of day and night is equal in all parts of the world!
Except it's not entirely equal. Since the earth's atmosphere bends sunlight when it comes over the horizon, we see the sun for a few minutes before it actually rises, so the day is slightly longer than the night. That's physics for you.
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