Heaviside Orbital Step Function Occurs This Weekend

Twice each year the Earth undergoes the first of two annual Heaviside step functions in its orbit around the sun. Earth is the only celestial body known to be subject to such a phenomenon. The Bible says God stopped the Earth it in its tracks one time (Joshua 10:13), but that is nothing compared to what truly omnipotent kings, politicians, and bureaucrats have decreed to occur since the early part of the last century. Those megalomaniacs instituted Daylight Saving Time (DST) here in the U.S. and most other parts of the world with a scheme which each year causes clocks to be advanced by one hour near the vernal equinox and to be retarded one hour around the autumnal equinox - in effect shifting the Earth forward and backward in its orbit. Experts disagree on who was the first person to propose our inconvenient timekeeping shift; some credit (or blame) a New Zealander named George Vernon Hudson while others give the honors to Englishman William Willett. One of the two can be thanked for the system that has caused societal earthquakes (a simile for what would happen if the Earth was suddenly physically shifted in its orbit) for a hundred years. Germany was supposedly the first country to implement DST.

An actual physical orbital shift would cause earthquakes of monumental magnitude. The Earth travels a distance of 938,900,000 km while orbiting the sun once every 365.2564 days, with an average speed of 107,200 km/hr. An orbital eccentricy of 0.0167 indicates a nearly circular path, hence an excuse to use the average speed and distance values to estimate an orbital positional shift of approximately 29.78 km/sec. The Heaviside step function is technically an instantaneous shift in values that is not possible in the real world since an event needs to occur in 0 seconds. An infinite amount of energy would be required to advance or retard the Earth's mass (or any mass) by any distance, not just 29.78 km, in zero time, so it is not possible to calculate an equivalent energy requirement. One way to determine the equivalent energy required to move the Earth an hour's worth of orbital distance under normal circumstances is to calculate the total energy in one Earth orbit and then take one hour's worth of it. Using textbook 2-body orbital mechanics equations:

The result is for a full year of orbiting. There are roughly 8765.8 hours in a year, so that works out to 3.0216E23 J/hr, or 3.0216E11 TJ/hr. I invite confirmation or refuting of my equations.

To put that in a gruesome perspective, the Little Boy thermonuclear bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima during World War II was rated at about 15 kilotons, which is about 62.8E12 joules (62.8 TJ). Therefore, the equivalent of 4.81 billion Little Boy bombs would be needed to shift the Earth's orbital position by one hour.

We conclude, therefore, that from a timekeeping standpoint the world's controllers of society exercise the equivalent power of 4.81 billion Little Boy bombs on two occasions each year - and that is without even allowing for the instantaneous nature of the bi-annual decree. Awesome.

Personally, I'd like to do away with Daylight Saving Time.

FYI: For the year 2015, Daylight Saving Time in the United States begins at 2:00 AM on Sunday, March 8 and ends at 2:00 AM on Sunday, November 1. Don't forget to set your clocks ahead Saturday night before going to bed.

Posted on  March 6, 2015