eli5 Why do we have different time zones around the world, and how do they work?
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Because people want to use times that actually mean something to them. Historically the best reference point was when the sun was at its highest point in the sky (local noon) – and that worked fine for a long. But noon happens 4 minutes later for every degree you go west, so your noon probably isn’t mine. And once fast communication came along (notably the railways), having everyone using their own local time caused all sorts of problems. It made sense for countries to either use the same time everywhere, or split things up into well-defined zones.
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