North Pole - Time

Time

In most places on Earth, local time is determined by longitude, such that the time of day is more-or-less synchronised to the position of the sun in the sky (for example, at midday the sun is roughly at its highest). This line of reasoning fails at the North Pole, where the sun rises and sets only once per year, and all lines of longitude, and hence all time zones, converge. There is no permanent human presence at the North Pole, and no particular time zone has been assigned. Polar expeditions may use any time zone that is convenient, such as Greenwich Mean Time, or the time zone of the country they departed from.

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Famous quotes containing the word time:

    Ah, that Time could touch a form
    That could show what Homer’s age
    Bred to be a hero’s wage.
    William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)

    Frequently also some fair-weather finery ripped off a vessel by a storm near the coast was nailed up against an outhouse. I saw fastened to a shed near the lighthouse a long new sign with the words “ANGLO SAXON” on it in large gilt letters, as if it were a useless part which the ship could afford to lose, or which the sailors had discharged at the same time with the pilot. But it interested somewhat as if it had been a part of the Argo, clipped off in passing through the Symplegades.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    ... patriotism cannot go back to an innocent time before the murderous excesses of twentieth-century nationalism.
    Jean Bethke Elshtain (b. 1941)