I was wondering if it was possible for the entire planet to observe the same day of the week simultaneously at any point of time during a day. I did some google searches and found out that the UTC offsets range over a 26 hour time period. If the time taken by earth to complete one rotation is 24 hours, why do we need to have 26 hour range instead of 24? I also saw that the GMT has 24 hour range of offsets. I am pretty confused by all of this.
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>why do we need to have 26 hour range instead of 24?
Because the Pacific is not as empty as one would think.
The international date line is not a straight line, but jumps back and forth East-to-West across the Pacific depending on whether individual Pacific nations want to be on one side or the other. Some of these jumps are large enough that additional time zones are necessary, particularly the Line Islands of the Pacific which are at +14, but which are (broadly) East of the Hawaiian Islands which are at -10.
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