Simple Universal Time
nico.schottelius.org
nico.schottelius.org
But more importantly, you would have to redefine the length of a second in order to keep days the same length. Redefining the length of a second is not good. Really, no.
Then there is the problem that this is not really a sensible metric time – 10 hours, 100 minutes and 100 seconds each? Frankly, that's stupid – ideally, you want the conversion factors to always be the same, ideally 10³. The swatch time mentioned above got this right with 1000 minutes (‘.beats’)/day, if absolutely necessary, you could probably also go with 100 quarter-hours/day and 100 seconds/quarter-hour, with 1 new second = 8.64 old seconds, or 1 old second ~ 0.12 new seconds.
The underlying problem here is that time lengths are intrinsically non-metric and there is little to no way to consistently make a year and a day both ‘metric’, simply because nature doesn’t require them to be. The same goes for nearly all other SI units – the equator is 40 Mm, the average height of a human is ~2m, a human weighs 80kg, not 100kg (and really, kg as the base unit?!).
We have a fixed system right now and when its off we just say this day is a minute longer and clocks synchronize.
There's nothing inherently accurate about 60 60 24.
What I cant wrap my head around is the lack of timezones. If I switched to UTC or something based on UTC right now would I be waking up every day at 5 PM? I dont know and I dont much care.
But it seems like there is tension between local/global requirements and right now we favor local because its where we live.
The problem here is not the one-off second, but the length of the second per-se which would have to change. Unfortunately, the length of the second is so deeply tied into the SI system that I’d rather have a non-metric day than a change in the length of seconds.
Timezones are somewhat orthogonal to this, and while there is some advantage to having a global time (‘let’s meet at 17:00, okay?’), local timezones are also somewhat helpful – you can expect shops to open around 8:00 all over the world and wouldn’t expect them to be open at 22:00; similarly, local authorities can change the time (and hence the time when shops open/close, e.g.) without everyone having to reprint their opening times signs (as happens for DST or during WWI/II).
So if our current system still has to be adjusted periodically to fit nature, then what is the real impact of changing the duration of a second? Besides the obvious: breaking every clock on earth LOL
- redefine the speed of light
- redefine the unit of distance
- redefine the unit of work
- redefine the unit of the electrical current
- redefine the unit of light flux
Really, no. No. NO.
"Decimal time is the representation of the time of day using units which are decimally related. This term is often used to refer specifically to French Revolutionary Time, which divides the day into 10 decimal hours, each decimal hour into 100 decimal minutes and each decimal minute into 100 decimal seconds"
It sounds quite practical, but one reason we have 60-based time and 360 degrees in a circle is that they divide evenly so many ways. Eg, 60 minutes divides evenly by 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, so it's easy to measure a third of an hour or 1/6 of a circle.
Thus my approach is to do - time will show if it was impossible or not.
Give it a try in thinking, you may enjoy the light feeling in your stomach afterwards.
Now unfortunately, the latter is roughly 365.24 days, so whatever unit X you choose such that 1 day = 10^n X, one year will be 3.65 10^{n+2} X. Again, there are two choices (as outlined before for the case 86400s = 1d): Either divide the year into some arbitrary months (365 has the ugly property of being 5 × 73) or have stupid stuff at the end (apparently some cultures have 12 months of 30 days each and five special ones). So is it possible to implement a much better way of counting time? Certainly, yes. Is SUT such a way? Probably. Is it worth it? I don’t think so.
(And, again: The matter of timezones is orthogonal to the matter of how you divide a day, you can easily abolish timezones and still use 246060 – you can even do so slowly by using UTC as an implicit timezone with your social circle.)
((As hinted at above, this whole matter will get even more ugly when there are humans on the Mars and Earth – clearly a second (basic SI unit) should be the same length on both planets, but what about hours? Days? Years?))