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Time zones are so weird,because in New Zealand where I'm from is 12am on the 30th but then I looked at the time zone in Las Vegas and they are 20 hours behind nz.
But still I find the time to interact with Americans on the internet....weird how this world works.
Earth obviously rotates once a day. Since we divide circles into 360° (thanks to the weird way the ancient Babylonians counted) and since we divide the day into 24 hours (because of how the ancient Egyptians divided their days), Earth rotates 15° per hour. You could have a system where everywhere in the world set their local clocks to noon when the sun reached its zenith at some local landmark. In fact, prior to the spread of the telegraph and railroads, that's how time worked. But once transportation and communication were faster than a horse, having a multitude of very local times became a major pain in the butt.
So the world was divided into 24 time zones, each of which covers 15° of longitude. But because these lines often ran down the middle of political jurisdictions (or even the middle of cities) and it was deemed ridiculous to have people on opposite sides of a country, state or even city operating at a different times, those lines make lots of jogs. China is most extreme example of this that I'm aware of. From east to west, it covers about 48° of longitude so it should have three time zones, but all clocks in China are set to one time. The effect is that if, for example, the sun rises at 7 am in a place on the eastern coast of China on a particular day, on that same day in a place at the same latitude to the far west of China, the sun will rise at 9 am.
As it happens, New Zealand is a good example of the jogs time zone lines make. Strictly speaking, there's a time zone line that cuts north-south across the South Island about 50 km to the west of Dunedin, so clocks to the west of that line should be set to an hour later than the clocks in Dunedin, Wellington, Christchurch, etc. Obviously that would be absurd, so it's not how things are.
With regard to you talking to people in Las Vegas, you're right that the time there is 20 hours behind yours, but that's because of the International Date line between you and them. In fact, you're about 70° to the west of them, so there should be four and a half time zones between you. But because there's no such thing as half time zones and because of those kinks in the lines, the time difference between you - disregarding the date change due to the International Date Line - is four hours.
Time zones and the logic behind them can be a little hard to get your head around, but what I find most bizarre when I take some time to think about it is how we can all interact in real time with people on the other side of the world. Back when I was a kid, the only place you saw "video phones" were in futuristic science fiction movies and TV shows. Hell, when I came to the UK in the late 1970s, it cost me roughly a dollar a minute to talk to my family in the USA, and the quality of the line was really pretty shit. These days, we're all carrying around in our pockets devices that allow us to have video chats with people on the far side of the world. You may take that for granted, but it's really pretty amazing.
There is nothing I can add to your masterpiece of perfectly written prose.
Those of you that were not paying attention in elementary school may have trouble subtracting negative numbers. Remember that minus a minus is positive. So New Zealand (GMT +13) minus Los Angeles (GMT -7) would be 13 - (-7) = +20; +20 - 24 = -4. We are all turning to the east. So NZ is 4 hours behind LA. Your calendar will be a day ahead from midnight to 8pm.
Yeah I find time zones really interesting to think about. Some might argue that they're really complicated, and so we should get rid of them to make things easier, but there's really no avoiding the complications caused either way. If we got rid of time zones and just had a universal time, then the sun would rise/set at different times all around the world. And therefore people would go to work and come home at different times too. For example, in the UK the sun would rise at around 06:00, and people would go to work at 09:00, as normal. But in New York, the sun would rise at around 01:00 and people would go to work at around 04:00. So instead of needing to remember how many hours behind/ahead another country is, we'd instead need to remember the time that the sun rises/sets there, and the hours that people work there, which would arguably be much more confusing.
Things like time zones, leap years and daylight savings mean you can be older than somebody and younger than somebody at the same time. (For example, there are many 17-year-old children who are older than 18-year-old adults).
Very slightly older or younger. The geographical time and leap years make sense for global accurate timekeeping. Daylight savings doesnt contribute to accurate time keeping and its obsolete for its benefits that's why most countries (now including the usa) have or getting it removed.
It depends what you mean by “slightly.” The furthest time zones are 26 hours apart. A leap year adds 24 hours. And daylight savings adds an hour. So… unless my math/logic is mistaken somehow… 26+24+1=51 hours. So a person can be legally younger than somebody, even though they are up to 51 hours (more than 2 days) older than them.