It’s mid-February, and I’m sure most everyone is sick of winter, but spring will be here before you know it. That makes me wonder how many people know or care about how we get our seasons. This is something that has fascinated me ever since I was a kid.
Let’s start with planet Earth and it’s axis. Earth’s axis is an imaginary pole going right through the center of Earth from “top” to “bottom.” This imaginary pole is tilted 23.4 degrees and always points in the same direction. Earth spins around this pole, making one complete turn each day. That is why we have day and night. Just that fact alone is awesome! Everyone gets their fair share.
Let’s not get ahead of ourselves though. In order to have light, we have to have a Sun. The Sun is basically a star. It is one of the billions and billions scattered throughout our universe. It is said that there are more stars (suns) in the universe, then there are grains of sand on every beach in the world!
Hopefully, everyone was taught in school what our solar system is? It is made up of the Sun, which is the center of our solar system, and the eight planets, moons, asteroids and dwarf planets. A dwarf planet is what poor ole Pluto was reclassified to a few years back. In between these planets, there is a whole lot of nothing. To give you an idea of how much nothing there is between us and the Sun… If you hopped a jumbo jet and flew the 93 million miles, dodged Venus and Mercury, it would take you about 19 years to get there.
As we know, the earth orbits around the sun. To make one full orbit, it takes 365 and one forth days to do this. We call this a full calendar year. Keep in mind, while it’s making the orbit around the sun at 67,000 miles per hour, the earth is also rotating on its axis at 1000 mph to give us day and night.
I live in North America. Our winter officially starts on Dec 21st or 22nd. It’s also the shortest day of the year.
In the northern hemisphere at this time, it is tilted as far away from the sun as it will be all year, in order to give the southern hemisphere their summer, and us our winter. Are you following me so far?
But because the earth is tilted 23.4 degrees, as it orbits the sun, in six months the northern hemisphere will be pointed towards the sun to give us summer and the southern hemisphere its winter. Is it me, or is that just totally amazing?
This happens year after year, century after century!
If that’s not evidence of God, then I don’t know what is.
If you look at the diagram below, It explains it perfectly.
The one thing I’ve often thought about, if the earth wasn’t tilted on its axis, then no one would have seasons. Wherever you lived on the earth, the temperature would always be about the same as the dates of the spring and fall equinox. (March 21 and September 21) I personally think that would be fine for me, but not for those that live in the northern U.S.
So tomorrow as you go through your daily lives, Take a second to thank God for this miracle. And then take a second to wonder why, if the earth spins us at a 1000 miles per hour, then why don’t we have a 1000 mph wind every day?