1

This is like a hypothetical question . Can the whole world have only one time everywhere .

What are the consequences if it were to be ?

Improve this question
2
  • Welcome to Skeptics! The questions on this site are supposed to be about "notable claims", and this doesn't seem to be one.
    – ChrisW
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 10:19
  • You might want to ask this question on Worldbuilding.
    – gerrit
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 22:04

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
4

Could the world have only one time zone? Yes, it could.

For example, everyone could use Swatch Internet Time or simply UTC or Epoch time.

The drawback would be that breakfast would happen at completely different times in different countries.

For example, if the world used UTC (and nothing else) then Australians would get out of bed in the morning at something like 10pm. They'd have breakfast at 11pm and set out for work at midnight. The sun would go down at maybe 6am (or something like that).

Noon (going by the sun) would be in the middle of the night (going by the clock). The morning (by the sun) would be in the evening (by the clock) and the evening would be in the morning.

This could be confusing.

So there's no legal requirement (that I'm aware of) for a country to use a timezone which matches the diurnal cycle at their particular position on the planet. It would just be weird not to.

Improve this answer
5
  • 1
    Poles and Spaniards eat at different times in the same timezone, perhaps partly for cultural reasons or perhaps because the sun sets later in Madrid than in Warsaw.
    – Henry
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 10:22
  • I vaguely recall there being various psychological and physiologial drawbacks to messing with your sleep rhythm, or having it out of sync with the day/night cycle.
    – Shadur-don't-feed-the-AI
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 15:20
  • @Shadur, AE isn't saying that Australians would begin their day by waking up after dark, he's saying that roughly at dawn, the Australian clocks would read "10pm", if everyone was on UTC.
    – GHP
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 17:02
  • @Shadur, Graham is right. I think the difficulty inherent in talking about how things would work if the clock time didn't match the diurnal cycle shows why we don't do this! :)
    – A E
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 19:35
  • 1
    In Aviation UTC is the standard. This ensures all pilots regardless of location are using the same 24-hour clock, thus avoiding confusion when flying between time zones.
    – Twinkles
    Commented Mar 12, 2015 at 16:38

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .