Sporadic Ramblings

So, today Brianna asked me if anybody ever fell asleep the exact same second as anybody else. Awesome kid question, I thought. "Sure," I answered, and then did the math. It turned out to be a lot more sure than my gut told me. Assume:

• 6 billion humans
• All fall asleep once a day (except college students pulling all-nighters, I guess, but we'll give the college students some back because I've seen some of them fall asleep multiple times in a single one of my sedimentary geology lectures)
• 24x60x60 = 86,400 seconds a day

That means roughly 70,000 people fall asleep in the same second as you every day. Of course, more than half of those people live in the opposite hemisphere from Brianna, so her chances aren't quite that good.

On the other hand, if you live in a city of 300,000 (she does), and most of the folks in that city go to sleep between 7 pm and 12 midnight, then you've probably got at least 15 people in your city drifting off at the exact same second as you every single night.

Sweet dreams...