Fall arrived Tuesday evening, so we are told. The orbit and tilt of the earth is not a thing that matches perfectly with our calendars, so this time it landed on September 22, which is actually more common than the 21st.

If you want just a touch of science (I know you do), what’s happening is that the tilt of the earth, as it swings in its orbit around the sun, is such that the sun is crossing the equator around September 22 (directly overhead there at noon). Unfortunately for us, it’s on its way down south of that, eventually to over the imaginary line from our school globes called the Tropic of Capricorn. It reaches there about December 21, when we in the northern hemisphere enjoy our shortest day of the year. You remember that: getting dark at four in the afternoon, no light in the morning until almost eight o’clock.

Tuesday was called the Fall Equinox or the “Autumnal Equinox” if we want to be even more verbose— meaning “equal night”, but it’s really meaning equal day and night.

I once spent a year in Resolute Bay, up on the arctic islands, as a weather observer in what now seems like a previous life. Like down here, September 22 is the usual “equinox” in Resolute, with equal day and night, but the sun is at such a low angle there that in the winter it can’t get over the horizon at all (I’ll keep referring to the sun doing something, which we humans have done since the beginning of time, though it’s us who are really doing most of the moving). In the summer, it manages to shine at a low angle right over the North Pole, such that it’s seen all day. I lived in the “Land of the Midnight Sun”.
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Did you ever wonder if there is something that conspires against you as you go about your daily routine? No, not the government, but something almost as sinister.

I learned in elementary math classes that there is something called the “Law of Averages”. I’m not sure if it’s as fixed as the Law of Gravity. It should be, but over the long haul it seems at times that something or someone has a finger in the works. I’m lodging a complaint. Not getting my fair share.

The Law of Averages tells us that if we flip a coin, it has a 50-50 chance of coming up as either possibility: heads or tails. If we flipped it a thousand times (fortunately, though retired, I still have other things to do), we should find that it comes up in the general area of 500 times on each side. The more we flipped, the closer it would get to half and half. Probably (there’s that word– from “probability”) we would do better if we changed coins now and then, in case the Queen’s face is inexplicably heavier than that of a moose and might affect the outcome. The Law of Averages tells us about things like the coin flip, and is a very general expression for the science, or really math, of “probability”. Probability Theory tells us odds for all kinds of situations. We can learn that the odds of winning the 6-49 lottery are astronomical, and that, although we know someone does win it, and (maybe) lives happily ever after, we have better chances of being struck by lightning. A website on the topic indicates that the odds of picking the correct number for 6-49 is one in 13,983,816. These are apparently the same odds as flipping a coin and getting tails 24 times in a row. That’s one to try. You first.
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