As the country moves from “Daylight Saving Time” back to “Standard Time,” the thought crossed my mind: where — and how — is the one hour of daylight saved? My study of physics and the law of conservation informs me that one cannot displace energy from one location without it reappearing in another. To think otherwise is to imagine that one can lengthen a blanket by cutting six inches from one end and sewing it back on the other end! So, if daylight is being “saved,” we must be able to locate its hiding place; it must be someplace! The problem of “daylight saving” is compounded by the realization that, with a multitude of time zones — as well as differing dates upon which the switch back to standard time occurs — there will be variations that can best be described as the “time warps” that fire the imaginations of science-fiction writers, creating all sorts of time-travel situations.
With my interest in the sciences, I decided to make an empirical investigation of the question. When I arose this morning, I went out into my yard and observed the sun which is, after all, the source of our “daylight.” As I watched, I was amazed to discover that the sun appeared motionless in the sky (my apologies to Copernicus) for a period of exactly one hour. As I timed this phenomenon, I had the distinct feeling of earthquake activity beneath me (I live in Southern California, a site of plate tectonics) and wondered if the sun’s stoppage might have generated movement along fault lines.
But after precisely sixty minutes, the sun resumed its trajectory across the morning sky, and I had the answer to my question: the sun had stopped its movement in order to reacquire all of its sunlight that had been “saved” in the previous months. While I have some difficulty in reconciling all of this with my scientifically-derived knowledge (e.g., that we live in a heliocentric rather than a geocentric system), I am confident that a public-opinion poll will be able to reconcile all of this. After all, in an age in which most people seem to believe that the printing of money is synonymous with the creation of wealth, anything is possible!
