• Happy solstice, everyone. The December solstice happens tomorrow at 11:12 Universal Time. At this instant, it'll be at 5:12 a.m. for the Central U.S., sunrise on the extreme northwest coast of South America, noon for Europe and Africa, and sunset in Western Australia, western Indonesia, western China and Russia. We in the Northern Hemisphere will have our shortest day and longest

night of the year. And yet - if you consider the word day in another light - the longest days of the year come each year in December for the entire globe.
• We're talking about day not as the period of daylight - but as the interval from one solar noon - or midday - to the next.
• In December, the days are about one-half minute longer than the average 24 hours.
• Keep in mind that the clocks on our walls don't measure the true length of a solar day. To measure the time from one solar noon to the next, you need a sundial. It can tell you the precise moment of local solar noon - when the sun reaches its highest point for the day.
• So it's December now, and that means the days are about one-half minute longer than the average 24 hours - for the entire globe. Half a minute longer doesn't sound like much, but the difference adds up. Some two weeks ago, when the mid-

northern latitudes were having their earliest sunsets, solar noon came seven minutes earlier by the clock that it does today. Two weeks from now, when mid-northern latitudes will wake up to their latest sunrises, solar noon will come about seven minutes later by the clock than on the December solstice.
• It might sound confusing. But it's an effect that many people notice. It causes the

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