h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This is one of those cases of "Not Invented Here" syndrome, the internet and the world already runs on a time that is the same where ever you are it's call UTC (Universal Time Clock) and the International Space Station already runs on it, as NASA and Russian Space Agency both use UTC. The concept behind Universal Internet Time is taken from UTC (and Arthur C. Clarke BTW).

If anyone has ever stopped and looked at the header of e-mails most of them have a time followed by something like -001, where the -1 is how many hours the senders clock is behind UTC. Lots of companies that have servers will have a Radio Clock receiver that picks up the Atomic Clock Time Signal (transmitted from Rugby by the National Physical Laboratory in the UK) and sets the server clock to it. Even if the server is not running on GMT the server will know how far ahead or behind GMT (which is also UTC) it is.

I recall that the British Government looked at Universal Internet Time and discarded it because of the fact that calculations where involved to get a human readable time. Of course it may have also had something to do with moving the World's Zero point away from the Zero Degrees Longitude line.

Why UTC/GMT?

The basis of time on Earth comes from Astronomical Observations. A day is the time taken for a star or the sun to return the same place in the sky. That was split down to 24 Hrs as 24 can be divided into 1/2, 1/3 & 1/4. Hours have sixty minutes because of the same reason.

The British Astronomer Royal was based a Greenwich in London and when Harrison solved the longitude problem marine clocks where set against Greenwich before sailing.

The World then agreed that the World's zero degrees longitude line would run through Greenwich. Now if memory serves me right, it is something like every 15 degrees of longitude changes the local Noon by 1 hour, that's how the time zones came about. When in fact it wouldn't really matter what time the sun was reached it's zenith but every one had set their clocks by the fact that noon was at 12:00 and wasn't going to change.

UTC was agreed as the standard time to which all Astronomical Observations are made.

Sir Bedevere.

Respect to "Mir" which shall be returning back to earth after it's 15 year holiday today.

Bring on UTC or UIT even the Metric week
(I am working 7 out of 7 anyway it might as well be 8 out of 10.)

People should not be so xenaphobic as to assume that their time zone is the centre of the planet.

Never forget Mir's 15 years, Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin. Peace, traveller and the first man in space.

PG

Let's hope that they target Mir better than the last station they tried to dump in the ocean, that hit South America.

The 7 day week? That comes from the fact that it takes 28 days for the Moon to complete an orbit (28 splits into 4 lots of 7). A 28 day Luna month has been around a lot longer than our current 30 or 31 day months.

I'm not sure if it is xenophobia or not about time zones. I tried to explain that UTC could replace (an may well do) time zones but my friends wouldn't have it. You see that they want to get up at 07:00 have lunch around 12:00 and go to bed at 23:00. No amount of explaining will change this people just cannot see that the number on the clock has no real relevance to the world, it's just too ingrained.

I know what you mean though as someone else pointed out the USA seems to want everything based on EST, the EEC wants CET and so on... This is just politics and has been going on for 100's of years the French still have this thing about the Paris Meridian but it gets over looked that the world would be on PMT for six months of the year...

It's a shame that the governments aren't as open minded as us scientists, we decided on a universal starting point and all work to it not for any reason beyond the fact that a fixed point was required to make calculations easier. All the Astronomical calculations are taken form tables based on UTC and the amended to local Noon time (by which I mean the point at which the Sun reaches it's zenith not 12:00).

Personally it's the digital watches that impress me. Just can't get over them, I mean having the time on my wrist, and all those tiny numbers. Amazing!

Anyway to be honest time is a concept that we fail to comprehend so what's the point. Everyday should be Saturday and forget about work!

Also on Mir/ISS time will be different from here on Earth due to the velocities that they are travelling, time will be going slower compaired to us.

Yeliab [h2g2as]

not to mention the plausability of colonizing other planetary bodies would cause a problem in all this time mumbo-jumbo, if I may interject.

I recall something about some physisicst discovering that a lot more theories and equations within physics once you drop the idea of time.

Don't recall much else about it however, anybody else?

Not getting up at 0700, not having lunch at 1200, not going to bed at 2300, no problem. Have the date changing in the middle of the day, or changing in the middle of the night at 1500? That will pose more of a problem.
For the rest of my views on this topic I refer you to: A819597 and A819623

This UIT thing seems to have been abandonned. At least you find not much more than this h2g2 entry at Google.