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If you could race around the world and celebrate the New Year in Many Time Zones...
It's mind-boggling to realize that the entire world does not enter the New Year at the exact same time. If you remember your earth science, the rotating planet on which humans dwell is separated into multiple time zones that pass by in singular hours. What if you could race against the ticking clock and celebrate the New Year in at least ten of the existing 26 time zones around the world? If you could, it would look something like the following.
What is UTC?
As everyone probably knows, the world is divided into different time zones. For example, the Netherlands uses a different time zone than Australia, which is on the other side of our globe.
Why do we have time zones?
As everyone knows, the earth is round and rotates, in 24 hours, on its own axis. This means that in different places on the earth, the sun shines at different times. Very old times were determined locally by the position of the sun. When it was in the south, it was 12 o'clock. The well-known sundial then always showed the time. In practice, this meant that at such a place it was 12 o'clock and a little further away it was half an hour later.
Long ago, a year used to have 500 days
The earth's spin is slowing down, and that has effect on the length of our days. Over the last century, the average day has grown by about 2 milliseconds because of this phenomenon. This might not seem like much, but it can add up over time.