Time-lapses on Earth - A Global Phenomenon

Do you have a best friend who is there for you 24/7 365? Well I'm sorry to break it to you - that's not really good enough. If your friend truly had your back, they would be there for you 24,0000006/7/365,242189! Quick trip down memory lane; George Washington was born on February 22nd 1732 - at least that's what we're told - however, his family Bible says he was born on February 11th 173(1/2) so which is it mister "I cannot tell a lie"? Don't even ask about 1752. 1752 looked pretty normal but what was the British Empire up to that year? Nothing really out of the ordinary, except in September - the 2nd was followed by the 14th. Strange. So what happened to the eleven days? Were they just deleted? what happened then leads us to question time and how the earth moves. Reconciling both of these things has led to some pretty strange things.

We all love time-lapse clips and videos of the stars moving across the sky but in actuality, WE are the ones who are tumbling through the universe on a giant-wet-rock vehicle called earth. The view from space above the North Pole shows that we spin counter-clockwise with west chasing east. I always remember this by thinking of the US as a weird Mane headed animal with Texas and Florida legs running forward, but we don't just spin we also revolve around the Sun on a plane tilted 23.4 degrees relative to our spin. That's kind of a nauseating imagery to imagine, but from a different perspective you can see that the Sun rising and setting is just the earth pointing you towards and then away from the Sun. This motion causes your sunrise, your noon - the moment when the Sun is highest in your sky - and your sunset. In order to understand this movement more, let's talk about meridians. You are on one at this very moment!

Your meridian is just aligned from where you are right now, straight towards the North and South Poles. It is a line of longitude as opposed to the horizontal lines that lay flat when north or south is up, which we call "flatitude" or actually - latitude. When the Sun is highest in the sky to you (noon), your meridian is pointed right at the Sun and a cool thing happens at this moment. All the shadows around you point directly towards one of Earth's poles unless...you're on the sub-solar point!

The sub-solar point is the point on Earth's surface directly below the Sun. It is always somewhere, and you can check its current location easily online. Now on the sub-solar point, shadows fall straight down so they can easily disappear twice a year. The subsolar point crosses over Hawaii the only place in the US where it hits land and when it does it is called "Lahaina noon" meaning 'Cool Sun'. At this point, straight vertical objects look unnatural, for a brief time, almost as if they were photoshopped into reality.

However, once every Earth rotation, the sub-solar point falls somewhere on your meridian making it noon for YOU. the technical name for this noon for you is "local apparent solar noon" the clock on your wrist and the clock on your phone don't tell you your local apparent solar time because long ago we realized that if every meridian had its own time a person just a few kilometers away seeing different shadows than you, would totally disagree with you on what time it was. Thus, town's adopted their own. Later on this trick was standardized and time zones as we know them today came about.

The brings about question and debates in regards to if time as we know it is even real. If the time zones are not 100% accurate and exact, what else do we not know about time?

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