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Using permanent DST instead of ST means: - Clock noon and solar noon are one hour apart, forever - It's the same thing as rotating the clock labels for all th
by tbabb 7y ago
Using permanent DST instead of ST means:
- Clock noon and solar noon are one hour apart, forever
- It's the same thing as rotating the clock labels for all the time zones by one step, all around the Earth
We are choosing what label to put on what time of day. If the labels are fixed throughout the year, both choices are exactly equivalent, after everyone decides whether to get up an hour earlier or an hour later. But one of them separates the time from the fundamental astronomical cycle from which it is derived.
- jimmaswell 7y agoSolar noon isn't really relevant to anything and it's rarely perfectly accurate anyway. Businesses etc. are never all going to agree to stop working on the time schedules they're used to. So, the most pragmatic option seems to be just "tricking" them and moving the clock so that we get more daylight time in the afternoon.
- tbabb 7y agoSo we can change the fundamental time system, but a business changing its hours from 9am to 8am is impossible?
- jimmaswell 7y agoThat's the gist of it I think.
- cgriswald 7y agoThere isn't anything fundamental about the time system. Timezones are already an abstraction that separates clock noon and solar noon. In places, clock noon and solar noon are already forever an hour or more apart even during standard time. Sometimes even places with the same longitude are an hour or more apart. Clock noon and solar noon are only in sync at one longitude per time zone in the first place. We have already managed to survive with the delta between them jumping by an hour two times a year for decades. Given all that I'm not sure how normalizing on a larger delta would be at all impactful. For people who need solar noon, sundials and almanacs are already available and needed.
- tbabb 7y ago> Timezones are already an abstraction that separates clock noon and solar noon. In places, clock noon and solar noon are already forever an hour or more apart even during standard time. Sometimes even places with the same longitude are an hour or more apart. That's a fair argument.
- kgwgk 7y agoThis is an interesting map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_European_Time#/media/File:World_Time_Zones_Map.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_European_Time#/media/F... Eastern Poland has two hours of difference with neighbouring Belarus, however it has the same time as Western Spain which is in reality over two hours apart.
- ClumsyPilot 7y agoTime system is pretty fundamental, in the same way a kilogram is. We don't reduce volume of a gallon to cope with an oil crisis. A flight lasts 4 hours, concrete takes a day to set , etc, etc. When a physical processes straddles timezones, it's a complete mess.
- cgriswald 7y agoNone of those things are strictly fundamental. We can do physics with entirely different units with no changes to our formulas as long as we keep the units consistent. Those relationships are fundamental. The units are not. But we aren't talking about changing the hour. We are talking about changing the label we attach to a given hour. A better analogy would be changing the word kilogram to something else if we found doing so useful. And, in fact, we do that all the time whenever we are talking in another language.