It’s New Years eve and my friends and I are debating: how many time zones are there on Earth? I say that there can’t be more than 24 time zones, but my buddy says there are more. Seems like that’d define how many times New Year is celebrated each year.
What an interesting question. You’re right that the logical answer to the question is 24: there are 24 hours in a day and it’s also how long it takes for the Earth to rotate once around.
But then again, that seems too easy.
Sure enough, a quick check of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration site reveals that there are actually a rather staggering 30 different time zones on Earth. Yes, more than there are hours in a day.
How is this possible? Well, it turns out that there are some fractional time zones in addition to the hour-by-hour offsets.
First, though, a timezone map:
Curious about those fractional time zones? Here they are:
| Offset from UTC | Location |
|---|---|
| -3.5 | Newfoundland Time |
| +3.5 | Iran |
| +4.5 | Afghanistan |
| +5.5 | India |
| +6.5 | Burma |
| +9.5 | Mid Australia |
Note: UTC = Universal Time Coordinated, the modern update to what used to be called Greenwich Mean Time.
Many people believe that India has multiple timezones, and some folk even suggest that the country has 15-minute timezones, but according to NASA:
India spans almost exactly two time zones, but their government decided that they wanted one time for the entire country. Their solution was to split the difference between what the time would be if they used two zones. So, Instead of the time being 10:00 in Bombay and 11:00 in Calcutta, the time is 10:30 in both places.
I think it’s entirely possible that this is the basis of the Chicago song lyric “Does anybody really know what time it is, Does anybody really care, If so I can’t imagine why…”
Oh, and Happy New Year, wherever you are!
Awsome post, and really appreciate your good job, Thanx a lot.
Now i know that from your post that India has basically two timezone but government officially follows only one. That’s nice. I saw your bombay calcutta example. Now i am all clear with timezone. Thanks for this post.
This is amusing for me…i am from India…and i always new that IST is 5.5 ahead of GMT…but never knew that it is rather rare than usual to have fraction time zones…
I have 3 clocks in my PC with 3 time zones.
Time zones – not 30, over 300. Since every country selects when to change from Standard Time to Daylights Savings time, or not have it at all, this throws another variable into Time Zones. I manage a database of all the airports in the world and we list over 300 time zones based on that criteria. Have fun, whatever time zone you’re in.
Giacomo, I did a Google search for “what timezone bermuda” and found this right on the search results page:
Bermuda
Mar 29, 2009 … What time zone is Bermuda in? Bermuda Standard Time – AST (Atlantic Standard Time) is 4 hours behind Greenwich Mean Time (GMT-4). …
So there ya have it. 🙂
what time zone is Bermuda in and what is it called?
Those are the usual time zones, but there are also a few odd ones that have 15 minute offsets. I knew of the one in Australia so went off looking, and found there are three. I found this to explain it better:
http://www.worldtimezone.com/faq.html
You may laugh at the India timezone, but it’s a very practical solution and of course it is much easier for a country to run on one (or few) timezone.
“10:00 in Bombay and 11:00 in Calcutta, the time is 10:30 then” … LOL … This is very funny. It looks the decision was taken by two statisticians 😀
I thought this one would be a tooo long article considering you started gathering info on it from the last 2days 🙂 [@twitter messages!]