My Date and Time of Birth Dilemma

 Time

There are 24 time zones in the world. These time zones are each 1 hour apart. I will in summary explain how the time difference comes across and what is used to determine the time in a region/country as a build up to the dilemma. From my Geography and Math classes, I remember there being questions like "what will be the time in country 'xyz' if the time in your country is  'this' and given that the country is on 'this' longitude while your country is on 'this'". The question required you to remember that the time difference between two consecutive longitudes is 4 minutes. (There are 360 longitudes and the globe does one full rotation in 24 hrs. The breakdown into minutes and longitude to longitude distance in time is 4 minutes).

So, longitudes determine time. They are defined as imaginary lines that run from North to South, from pole to pole but measure distance from East to West (separates East from West). The most famous one is the prime (Greenwich) Meridian at 0 longitudes. The Greenwich name is derived from a location in London.

Note: Latitudes run from East to West with the most famous one being the equator. They separates North from South. Countries on the equator have less variability with seasons and have fairly equal hours of daylight and darkness in a day.

The prime Meridian runs through the following countries:

England, France, Spain, Algeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, Ghana and Antarctica . England, Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo and Ghana have adopted Greenwich mean time (GMT) as their standard time. France, Spain and Algeria are at GMT +1 and Antarctica is at GMT +13. 

Other countries on GMT include:

• Gambia           • Guinea     • Guinea-Bissau     • Iceland 
• Ivory Coast     • Liberia     • Mauritania 
• Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan Da Cunha 
•Senegal            •Sierra Leone

NOTE: GMT is now referred to as UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). The change happened in 1972.


The dilemma

Say you were born on,

Case 1: 
The early hours of the first day of the year. i.e.,  January the 1st at 1:00 am.

Case 2: 
The last hours of the last day of the year. i.e.,  December the 31st at 11:00 pm.

For both cases, let us assume they were born in Ghana and they like making their new year (birthday) wish or prayer at the exact time they were born. The other assumption is, they relocate to different countries.

Case 1 now lives to the West of the Greenwich Meridian and is GMT/UTC -3 (Brazil). That means at 1:00 am Jan 1st in Ghana, it is 10:00 pm Dec 31st the previous year in Brazil.

Case 2 now lives to the East of the Greenwich Meridian and is GMT/UTC +3 (Madagascar). That means at 11:00 pm Dec 31st in Ghana, it is 2:00 am Jan 1st the next year in Madagascar.

The question then is, at what time should the person make their birthday wish or prayer? Would they rather use their home country time or their new place of residence's time? Which one is correct and true? Why? Or is this all a story on relativity?


Happy exploring!!

~NMN

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