What If... Time zones didn't exist? | What If

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Daylight saving time means we change the clocks twice a year, and the world has over 30 different time zones. Some countries span multiple different time zones, while the likes of China and India choose to have just one time zone despite the huge differences in real time from east to west.

Time influences almost every aspect of our lives – yet we barely ever stop to think about what time means exactly. Studies show the Daylight Savings Time leads to spikes in heart attacks and traffic accidents, while reduced sleep due changing times is linked to increased levels of obesity.

So, why do we even bother? That's the argument of some scientists, who believe the whole world should switch to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which is already used in aviation and in space. In this video we ask, what if we abolished time zones (and clock changes) forever?

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Hello, WIRED. The map positions for Shanghai and Xinjiang is wrong, it's switched. Xinjiang should be on the left and Shanghai should be on the right. 6:55

xenbitt

Entertaining and informative! Great vid!

hanslucian

I've seen some stuff with this idea presenting it as trendy and smart, but it just doesn't make sense. I fail to see how it's more confusing to have to figure out what time it is in a given place than it is to know the time, because it's the same everywhere, and to have to figure out what local customs are. As it is right now the official time actually provides useful information about the time of day. Further, I don't think that people would ever except that they now have to adjust their day to start at unusual clock times, in order to operate at normal times of day. Further, I think that any benefits of allowing people to live their lives closer to solar time would be significantly inhibit by the fact that businesses would still want to operate on similar hours to those in their area and so it's unlikely that too much benefit would be derived. In fact using a single worldwide timezone, may lead to more issues as people and businesses try to align their schedules more with those in major cities. In the areas near the prime meridian a lot of people would probably be close enough that out of habit they likely would change the clocks and not their schedules relative to the clocks). Finally, it would be a logistical nightmare for many places to have midnight occur in the middle of working hours, especially when it comes to those near the international date line.

kevinmoynihan

Before about 1885, there were no time zones. Each city and town had its own local time. It was railroad companies that gave us time zones.

johntracy

I'm surprised there was no mention of Swatch Internet Time. If we are going to make a massive change (logistical and cultural), we might as well make a clean-sheet change. So many advantages over the current UTC system.

matthewlue

The video describes the problems of having a single timezone in India and China, and then concludes that we should use one timezone for the entire world? What?

kered

Informative - but never answered the question.

tombradford

5:45 this was a fun video until someone tried using it as an excuse for obesity.

First it was fat then it was E-s then it was non organic foods then it was sugar then it was gluten and now it's going to bed at bad times or waking up earlier? Consumerism the bane of humanity

Riael

Time is the way we measure the length of an event . To assume anything else is ridiculous.

bnb

You'd think the two most populated countries would have more time zones.

ErichoTTA

3:30 Spain actually has more than one time zone.

mahamaysam

Good luck getting every country in the world to use the same time

gftyhify

Stick with standard time where there’s more mornings light
Humans need morning light to reset our body clock
Without it we will have more health issues
Standard time is the actual time when DST not used
DST is normally 1 hour forward
Standard is when the clocks go back or no clock changes at all

tahmidabdin