Time zone changes temporarily disrupt our circadian rhythms, but we still haven’t given up on switching from daylight saving time to winter time and vice versa. However, almost everywhere we travel around the globe we will know what time it is according to the local time, but we can also easily find out what time it is in other parts of the world. But there is only one other area on the planet where “time does not exist” in the sense that we cannot determine what time it is.
The last zone without a time zone on Earth
Time is probably the most important resource in people’s lives. Depending on it, we live all the events of our lives, make plans, work, travel and much more. Knowing what time it is has become a vital necessity for modern man.
But probably many people would like to be in a place where no one blames them for sleeping until noon or going to bed at 3 in the morning.
Strange as it may seem, it exists, being, in fact, the last area on Earth where the time cannot be set. Instead, as you may have already guessed, it is a very cold place.
At the poles of the planet, day and night are not as separated as they are as we approach the equator. In fact, since our planet is flat and not a perfect sphere, if we look up at the sky and see a sunrise at the South Pole, this will only tell us what month we are in – August, September or perhaps October – but not what time it is.
Where it is, how do you determine what time it is, actually
Although there are no permanent residents in Antarctica, about 5,000 people work there during the polar summer, mostly scientists and maintenance staff, and about 1,000 during the polar winter.
They have even started to develop their own accent when they speak.
For practical reasons, for example, they agree on when it is time for work or rest and must set their own local time. In Antarctica, as a rule, it is set by each research team according to the time of the country they belong to and which finances their research.
For some, this even means adjusting their watch twice a day. At the extreme South Pole, for example, the Amundsen–Scott Polar Station operates in New Zealand time, so visitors also adopt that time during their stay there.
At the other pole, in the Arctic, the time zone is set at the latitude of the ship’s captain in that region, according to timeanddate.com.
This can lead to strange situations where supply vessels operate in a completely different time zone than the ones they are supplying. However, these remote places remain the only areas where you can choose, you can set your own time, unrelated to what it actually is in the rest of the world.
