Presently, the earth is divided into time zones that organize the day similarly around the planet: dawn arrives in the early morning hours and nightfall comes toward the end of the 24-hour cycle.
But what if there were no zones -- what if time were constant around the world? Which location might evolve as the authority that dictates how the clock is set? And what might it be like to live halfway around the world from there -- to function where daylight and the clock are inversely correlated?
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For those who have already experienced normal days, the second best choice after prime-time location would be halfway around the world. At least there you can mentally swap "PM" with "AM" and have a semblance of regular life, not much different with how people handle Daylight Savings Time during the first week ("Honey, it's 7pm but it's really 6pm!"). However, the day would change at noon, and that would be disrupting.
ReplyDeleteBut the more interesting question is whether any of this would matter if the earth had always had the arrangement you mention, and I think in that case it wouldn't. People would be used to sunrise at 11 AM or sunset at 2 PM just as they are used to it in extreme latitudes today.