South 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 South 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 a priori reason for placing the South Pole in any particular time zone, but as a matter of practical convenience the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station keeps New Zealand Time. This is because the US flies its resupply missions ("Operation Deep Freeze") out of McMurdo Station which is supplied from Christchurch, New Zealand.

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Famous quotes containing the word time:

    There is time enough for everything, in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once; but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.
    Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)

    We disparage reason.
    But all the time it’s what we’re most concerned with.
    There’s will as motor and there’s will as brakes.
    Reason is, I suppose, the steering gear.
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
    Bible: Hebrew Ecclesiastes, 9:11.