Winter Solstice 2011, Shortest Day Of The Year, And 1 Year Away From The End Of The World

Crap I need to get to work on my bucket list I been slacking way to much on it!  Winter Solstice 2011 is here, marking the shortest day of the year for 2011.  And maybe marking the beginning of the end!  If the Mayan calendar calculations are correct, I only have a year to accomplish so many things!  I need to sky dive, start a fight with a random person for no particular reason at all, get drunk and hug a stranger, give $100 to the wrapping bum downtown, order my wife 10 dozen roses, take on the Vince's Pizza challenge, take me & the wife to the Bahamas, ugh there may not be enough time.  But then again i don't think the Mayan Calendar ending next year means it's going to be the end of the world.

The winter solstice will take place at 11:30 (central) tonight.  But what exactly does that mean and why does it give us such a short day?  Finally, all that useless knowledge I have can be used!  Allow me to explain what will be taking place tonight.  A force that has been in place for billions of years with Earth in the orbital mechanics of our planet.

The Earth turns on its axis as it circles the sun, its tilted at an angle of 23.5 degrees  which is relative to its orbit. Whatever the season, the axis points the same way, with Polaris, the North Star, hovering over the North Pole, it actually shifts slowly in a 26,000-year cycle.

Tonight is the night that the axis, as seen from the north, points as directly away from the sun as it will all year.  So Chicago, for instance, will get just 9.1 hours of daylight tomorrow, Atlanta and Los Angeles will get 9.9 hours because they are closer to the equator.  We'll get about 9.5 hours of sunlight here in Amarillo.  Everything north of the Arctic Circle will experience 24 hours of darkness.

Here's an interesting history fact, we've know this for a very long time!  Humans knew this back in the time of Stonehenge! (ABC News)

We've known all this for a long time, which conveniently brings us back to Stonehenge, which was built between 3000 and 1600 BC. Modern scientists figured out long ago that it was, among other things, an ancient astronomical calendar, and that on the morning of the summer solstice -- usually June 21, when northern days are at their longest -- the sun rises over the famous heelstone at one end.

But they have continued to wonder how the ancient builders of Stonehenge built the great circle, and where they got the rock for it -- none of which is commonly found on Salisbury Plain, west of London.

I actually have a quick, short answer for that question above.  Aliens!  Yup, it was ancient aliens, gotta be the answer!  Oh wait, it wasn't aliens?  DAMN!

Now, researchers from Leicester University and National Museum Wales report they've made a match. They say rocks at Craig Rhos-y-felin, an outcropping in south Wales 100 miles away, are 99 percent similar in mineral composition and texture to the rock at Stonehenge -- more similar than any other stone found. The researchers said they were able to match Stonehenge rock to an area just a couple of hundred feet across.

Well whatever, enjoy your short lived amount of light tomorrow due to the winter solstice of 2011.  Some folks use it as an excuse to go out and booze it up a little earlier.  I like to go to sleep earlier because it just does that to me.  These short days just make me sleepy.  But we can all take solace in the fact that days are actually about to start getting longer!

BTW I hear if you go to stonehenge on winter solstice, it's like mardi gras!  just a big party!