Vocaboly.com

[Gary Eickmeier]

I sometimes write these explanations of time around New Year's Eve in
the various newsgroups that I am in, and since this one has some of the
most intelligent readers, I thought it would be appropriate, whether you
have thought about this stuff before or not.

The ball falls in Times Square at midnight Eastern Standard time, and
that event defines the advent of the new year for a lot of people.
Certainly, we understand that the event happens three hours later in
California. But how does it work, globally speaking? What's the "big
picture"?

Well, the first instance of the new year happens at precisely noon
Greenwich Mean Time, sometimes called GMT or CUT for Coordinated
Universal Time, or just Z for "Zulu" in military talk, on the 31st of
December. At that moment, the lower limb of the sun (the other side of
the globe from the sun) begins wiping in the new year from the
international date line. For example, at 12:01 GMT it is 00:01 the next
day (new year's day) in a time zone extending approximately 7.5 degrees
each side of the 180 meridian.

As the day progresses, the new year's day comes in all around the world,
from east to west, time zone by time zone, until, 24 hours later, it
becomes 12:01 GMT (New Year's day) and 00:01 in the time zone of the
international date line the next day, January 2nd.

Bottom line, it takes 24 hours for the new year's eve "moment" to happen
all around the globe, or to wipe in the new day. Then, similarly, it
takes 24 more hours to completely wipe out New Year's day - so January
1st exists somewhere in the world for 48 hours!

This turns out to be a good deal, because that gives us longer to
recover from our hangovers, and it gives Santa 24 hours to deliver all
the toys on Christmas eve. And another 24 hour grace period.

Happy New Year to all and to all a good night,

Gary Eickmeier