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The vernal equinox is upon us: On Tuesday, March 20, both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres will experience an equal amount of daylight. For those of us here in the Northern Hemisphere, it marks the beginning of spring, with daylight hours continuing to lengthen until the summer solstice in June. For those south of the equator, it’s the beginning of autumn. Technically speaking, the equinox occurs when the sun is directly in line with the equator. This will  happen at 12:15 pm Eastern time  on Tuesday. Below is a short scientific guide to the most equal night of the year. 1) Why do we have an equinox? The equinox, the seasons, and the changing length of daylight hours throughout the year are all due to one fact: The Earth spins on a tilted axis. The tilt — possibly  caused  by a massive object hitting Earth billions of years ago — means that for half the year, the North Pole is pointed toward the sun (as in the picture below). For the other half of the year, the South P

after  much speculation , actress and activist Cynthia Nixon announced Monday that she is officially throwing her hat in the New York gubernatorial race. "I've never lived anywhere else," Nixon says in the video. "But something has to change. We want our government to work again, on health care, ending mass incarceration, fixing our broken subway. We are sick of politicians who care more about headlines and power than they do about us. It can't just be business as usual anymore." The "Sex and the City" star will challenge Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the state's Democratic primary in September. Nixon is forming a team of alumni of the New York political sphere, including Rebecca Katz and Bill Hyers -- who worked on New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's first campaign -- to help her ahead of the primary .  Katz will work on the campaign as a senior strategist. Nicole Aro, who recently worked as the American Federation of Labor an

  The actress Cynthia Nixon officially jumped into the race for governor of New York on Monday, setting off what promises to be a tumultuous six months as she challenges Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo in this year’s Democratic primary. Ms. Nixon, 51, has never before run for elected office and has chosen a huge undertaking for her first bid: seeking to unseat a two-term incumbent (and son of a three-term governor) who is sitting atop more than $30 million in campaign cash. The contest will likely become one of the marquee Democratic primaries in the nation, as Ms. Nixon is widely expected to challenge Mr. Cuomo from the political left. Her campaign immediately cast Mr. Cuomo as a “centrist and Albany insider,” and some of her initial rhetoric on inequality echoed Senator Bernie Sanders. “We are now the most unequal state in the entire country, with both incredible wealth and extreme poverty,” she said in a video posted on Twitter announcing her candidacy. Splashed across the top of h

Facebook has scheduled an open meeting to all employees Tuesday to let them ask questions about the unfolding Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, according to an internal calendar invitation reviewed by  The Verge . The meeting, which is scheduled for 10AM PT, will be led by Paul Grewal, the company’s deputy general counsel. Grewal is expected to explain the background of the case, which involves the user profiles of as many as 50 million people being used by Cambridge Analytica as part of its ad targeting efforts during the 2016 election. Grewal is also expected to take questions via a polling feature found on the meeting’s internal event page. Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment. While Facebook executives have been active in discussing the Cambridge Analytica story on internal forums, Tuesday’s meeting will represent the first time a large group of employees will have the opportunity to question company leadership live and in person. (The event i

The first time I met Christopher Wylie, he didn’t yet have pink hair. That comes later. As does his mission to rewind time. To put the genie back in the bottle. By the time I met him in person, I’d already been talking to him on a daily basis for hours at a time. On the phone, he was clever, funny, bitchy, profound, intellectually ravenous, compelling. A master storyteller. A politicker. A data science nerd Two months later, when he arrived in London from Canada, he was all those things in the flesh. And yet the flesh was impossibly young. He was 27 then (he’s 28 now), a fact that has always seemed glaringly at odds with what he has done. He may have played a pivotal role in the momentous political upheavals of 2016. At the very least, he played a consequential role. At 24, he came up with an idea that led to the foundation of a company called Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm that went on to claim a major role in the Leave campaign for Britain’s EU membership referendu

Austin police just confirmed what residents have feared for weeks -- a suspected serial bomber is attacking their city. For the fourth time this month, a device exploded on Austin residents. What makes Sunday night's blast especially terrifying is that the device was left on the side of a residential road and triggered by a tripwire, police said Monday. Investigators have found similarities between that device and three previous bombs, which were stuffed inside packages and left on residents' doorsteps, Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said. "We are clearly dealing with what we expect to be a serial bomber at this point," he said. Timeline of the bombings The latest device -- which was triggered by a tripwire -- shows "a higher level of sophistication, a higher level of skill," he said. And unlike the victims of the previous blasts, the two men wounded in Sunday's explosion are white, Austin police said. Both men are expected to recove

A growing sense of alarm spread across Texas’ capital city Monday as the authorities confirmed that a new makeshift bomb that injured two people in southwest Austin on Sunday appeared connected to three earlier explosions, but suggested a “higher level of sophistication” with the use of a tripwire triggering device. “We are clearly dealing with what we expect to be a serial bomber at this point,” Brian Manley, Austin’s interim police chief, told reporters as parts of Travis Country, where the latest bombing occurred, were placed on lockdown through midafternoon. Residents there had been asked to remain indoors through the early part of the day and look out for suspicious packages, like backpacks or boxes — meaning nearly every parcel in this city of 947,000 was suddenly an object of potential suspicion. The latest warnings signaled a growing level of concern among the authorities, who were scrambling to identify similarities in tactics and targeting in the four attacks, whic