Current Events > Is the whole reason we have time zones so that

(+) Yeah! (+)

Idiots watching movies won't go whaaaaaaaaaat how can it be dark outside at 11AM

Because screw that

Or excuse me, without time zones we also probably all use 24 hr time so it would just be 1100.

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No, it's for train scheduling
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Antifar posted...

No, it's for train scheduling

Does having to convert time zones make scheduling easier?

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DevsBro posted...

Does having to convert time zones make scheduling easier?

Yes
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The Popo posted...

Yes

How?

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

The question is why do these have to be different things

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Because the Earth rotates.

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yunalenne10 posted...

Because the Earth rotates.

Not seeing a connection.

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DevsBro posted...

How?

The question is why do these have to be different things

Metric sucks

Synchronized time sucks

Get outta here

not sure iif serious

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There's no real need for SI though. Sure, it would be nice, but your average Joe isn't working out physics problems in his head. He can always just do some conversions beforehand. The one major benefit I can think of is making it easier to compare unit price when one is by ounce and the other is by pound. Or maybe if you don't have appropriate measuring cups.

But time zones screw up everything. We have data coming in from CST and PST, begin converted to UTC on a machine in ESTZ and converted in CSTZ to CST, which is a headache but you only have to do it once... except for the exceptions that also arise from not using UTC. What about DST begin? What about DST end? Cost us thousands this year. Do we need to be concerned about Leap Year? Leap Seconds?

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Mr Hangman posted...

There's legitimate complaints to be had about how computers handle time zones, but complaining that they exist at all is just dumb.

The obvious solution to the computer issues is to store all times internally according to atomic time (TIA), which has no leap seconds or any changes at all except constantly counting upward, and then covert for display in whatever time zone you prefer.

Is that like a stardate?

Can we just use stardate?

I thought stardate was earth centric. Im fine with that

Mr Hangman posted...

You can make it Earth-centric, that's not the problem. Say you're on Earth, keeping time, and I'm on Mars. I ask you what time is it. You send a reply with the exact time you sent the message. It will take between 3 and 22.5 minutes to reach me. The distance varies that much. If I set my time to that I'll be slow. So now I have to compensate for that time delay. To do that I need to know exactly what the delay was. To do that I need to measure the delay of a round-trip message bounce. Of course the distance is also changing a bit all that time.

Now I've synced my clock with you, but there's probably some error in all that process. Then even if our two clocks both keep perfect time, they will still drift apart something like half a second per year due to special and general relativity. Within the solar system these effects are not too significant, although they do matter for high precision systems like GPS. But when it comes to interstellar travel, then the question of what time is it gets complicated.

Cant you just estimate the time it would take light to travel to earth, account for that, then use earth time?

The time relative to your location is more important than the global synchronized time

imagine telling someone in Europe what time you wake up at, for example. For one person it could be 6am and for the other it would be 4pm

in a global society time zones are more helpful for communicating

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