Monday, December 21, 2015

The Winter Solstice: depends where you are on the globe...

They like to time everything from GMT in ruddy old England, and so Google shows us this little blurb....

When exactly is the winter solstice and what is it?

The December solstice happens at the same instant for all of us, everywhere on Earth. This year the solstice occurs on Tuesday December 22nd at 04:49 GMT (Universal time) with the sun rising over Stonehenge in Wiltshire at 08:04.

But.... I'm in the Pacific Time Zone of North America where it's GMT-8, or putting that another way, I'm eight hours younger than someone standing at Stonehenge so here, it's still going to be December 21 at 20:49 and not as above. And when the sun rises over Stonehenge in Wiltshire at 08:04, the local time here will be just 00:04, or four minutes after midnight on December 22.

And to all you happy Googlers at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California, please stop trying to confuse me with facts.

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