Thursday Things: Longest Day Edition
20 June 2024. Vol 6 No 25. By Dan McGirt. #254
It’s Thursday Things! This week we celebrate the solstice and cut the red wire.
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Welcome to summer! Photo by Pedro Lastra on Unsplash
Summer solstice
Today marks the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere (and the winter solstice for our Happy Subscribers in the southern hemisphere). It’s the longest day of the year (or, if you’re in the southern hemisphere, the shortest).
What is the solstice, you may ask? Royal Museums Greenwich has you covered:
The summer solstice occurs in June in the Northern Hemisphere and marks midsummer: the 'longest day' and 'shortest night' of the year.
On this day, the number of hours of daylight are at their maximum, while the number of hours of night are at their minimum.
However, while most people consider the summer solstice to be a day, it is in reality an exact moment in time that falls upon that day. This moment comes when whichever hemisphere you're in is most tilted towards the Sun.
That last point was something I just learned! I, too, thought the solstice was a day, but it is an exact moment. If you want to know what time the solstice occurs where you, then once again people in Greenwich are here to help with this helpful Solstice Time calculator at the link.
When is the Solstice in your time zone? Use the Daylight Map to add your location, select GMT and move the slider to the said solstice time. You will view the corresponding time in your chosen location.
Spoiler alert if you’re in the Eastern time zone: The solstice will occur at 4:50 pm today.
But wait! There’s more!
Summer Solstice 2024 is the earliest in over 200 years!
Even with all of these corrections, overcorrections, and overcorrection-corrections, our calendar still remains slightly out of sync with the solar year. As a result, each leap year, the vernal equinox occurs around 40-50 minutes earlier than the previous leap year vernal equinox.
This year's summer solstice is the earliest we've seen in a long time…
We actually have to go all the way back to 1796 — 228 years ago — to find an earlier summer solstice.
That year, it was on June 20, at 1:24 p.m. 'Local Mean Time'. Local Mean Time was in use before standard time was introduced in the late 1800s, and set local noon for each community based on when the Sun was highest in their sky.
So set a timer and make sure you’re outside this afternoon to give a wave, or a raise a toast, to the sun and celebrate the 2024 solstice. Earth has made it all the way around the track one more time!
10 Fascinating Facts About the Summer Solstice
Happy summer! (or winter, depending on your location).
Cut the wire
Detective stories, whether in print or on screen, remain one of the most popular entertainment genres. And one of the most popular subgenres is the “police procedural” which focuses the storytelling more on the how of investigating crimes than in coming up with clever locked room puzzles, shootouts, or brilliant deductions by genius amateur sleuths.
Forensic science fascinates the public — witness the long running CSI franchise. Of course, the portrayal of crime solving techniques on TV is shaped more by the needs of drama than strict scientific accuracy, which can mislead viewers. Fictional investigators tend to neatly wrap up the case in an hour (less commercials) and their gee whiz computer enhancements, glowing lights, and chemistry sets rarely fail to nail the perp.
This has resulted in the so-called “CSI effect”:
The CSI effect refers to television shows like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Law & Order, and 48 Hours Mystery, and the impact they have on jurors. It is said that jurors who watch these types of shows may place a heavy emphasis on forensic science in a case. These jurors will tend to believe forensic evidence is 100% accurate and that it should be produced in every criminal case. Prosecutors have claimed jurors may be reluctant to vote to convict if the police were unable to recover any forensic evidence from the crime scene.
Sometimes the kind of forensic evidence you see on TV isn’t available in a real world case.
Sometimes, the crime lab technicians make mistakes. Sometimes they even falsify evidence. Unfortunate, and a perversion of justice, but it happens.
And sometimes the science isn’t as settled as we thought it was.
Wired for Disaster: The Hidden Dangers of Wire-Cut Evidence in Forensics
New research highlights the importance of careful application of high-tech forensic science to avoid wrongful convictions. The study was published on June 10 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In the study, which has implications for a wide range of forensic examinations that rely on “vast databases and efficient algorithms,” researchers discovered that the odds of a false match significantly increase when examiners make millions of comparisons in a quest to match wires found at a crime scene with the tools allegedly used to cut them.
The rate of mistaken identifications could be as high as one in 10 or more, concluded the researchers, who are affiliated with the Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence (CSAFE), based in Ames, Iowa.
They call it the “paradox of forensic matching”.
“It is somewhat of a counterintuition,” said co-author Susan VanderPlas, an assistant professor of statistics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. “You are more likely to find the right match – but you’re also more likely to find the wrong match.”
Well, that’s not good.
Wire cuts and other tool marks are used frequently as evidence in robberies, bombings, and other crimes. In the case of wire cuts, tiny striations on the cut ends of a wire may be matched to one of many available tools in a toolbox or garage. Comparing the evidence to more tools increases the chances that similar striations may be found on unrelated tools, resulting in a false accusation and conviction.
Wire-cutting evidence has been at issue in at least two cases that garnered national attention. This includes one where the accused was linked to a bombing based on a small piece of wire, a tiny fraction of an inch in diameter, that was matched to a tool found among the suspect’s belongings.
Science is a great tool, but we need to always be humble and cautious in its application to make sure our scientific tools are serving good ends and not misleading us into false confidence.
Thank you for reading!
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