The universe we inhabit is full of cycles. night turns to day, the planets revolve around the sun, the seasons change, and much more. we use these cycles to measure the passage of time, but like the cycles of the universe, that was just the beginning.
We’ve also created time zones, calculations down to the millisecond, and various ways to measure them all. our lives revolve around time, which is why we have created a rich and varied database of tools and information that we like to call time now.
the time now is an accurate tool that provides multiple time related services, various detailed articles and more. you will be able to know what the current local time is, in more than one hundred thousand cities around the world, as well as the utc/gmt offset, the full name of the time zone and the abbreviation.
You will know if each location observes daylight saving time (dst) or daylight saving time, right now or in the near future. this database is updated with each new decision of governments or astronomical institutions.
Know the local weather and forecast in most cities around the world. You have access to current conditions, the 48-hour forecast, the 2-week forecast, and an hour-by-hour temperature forecast. most websites would stop there, but we also give you sunrise and sunset times, length of day, moon phases, and even moonrise and moonset. enjoy multiple daily updates of this data, up to every fifteen minutes.
the time now also offers comprehensive local business directories with opening and closing times in many countries including uk, sweden, germany, poland, norway, denmark, netherlands, finland, france and italy. the local business directory for each country is available in its translated version of the website.
In case you need a specific conversion, we provide many useful tools like:
- a time zone converter that will help you find the time difference between two cities or two time zones.
- an international meeting planner, to find the best time for a meeting with people from all over the world.
- a dialing code wizard, to help you make a phone call between two locations.
- a distance calculator, to find the distance between two cities.
The time is now available in 29 languages. it is used by millions of people around the world every month as a valuable resource of information, knowledge and a means to plan and understand the weather around the world.
the scientific and philosophical concept of time
Before one can understand time zones, daylight saving time, and other methods of measuring time, it would be best to have an idea of how science defines this concept. Beyond science, this concept is also heavily researched and discussed in the realms of religion and philosophy.
We can’t reach out and grab it, nor can we watch it go by, and yet time exists anyway. is defined as “a measure by which events can be ordered from the past, through the present, and into the future. It also measures the duration of events and the intervals between them.”
what we can see, feel and touch are known as spatial dimensions. these are the first, second and third that we all know. however, time itself is known in science as the fourth dimension. when we measure things like speed and repetition, we use standard units of measure like seconds, minutes, and hours.
this is known as the “operational definition of time”. it is purely scientific and does not seek to understand the concept in any philosophical way. Of course, the lines begin to blur as scientists try to measure events in space-time and other elements of the universe around us.
Attempting to truly measure time is a goal with which science continues to struggle. Proper measurement is crucial in all scientific fields like astronomy, navigation and many more. currently our international measurement system is based on events that are repeated at certain intervals.
The movement of the sun across the sky, the phases of the moon, the beating of a heart, these are all means of measuring the apparent flow of time. In terms of philosophy, there are two main beliefs regarding time and its existence or absence.
this early approach is named after sir isaac newton. he believed that time was part of the universe, that it exists as a separate and independent dimension from our own where events occur in sequence. in one of his works, philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, he spoke of absolute time and space.
the concept spoke of a “true and mathematical time, by itself and by its own nature flows equally regardless of anything external”. things like motion and the “feel” of time were not true concepts of the term. he called these things “relative time” and they were the only concepts we could understand as a species.
The other side of the coin is a theory put forth by two famous philosophers named Gottfried Leibniz and Immanuel Kant. this secondary theory is more simplistic, simply holding to the belief that time is not a thing or a place. given this truth, it cannot be accurately measured or traveled through.
a history of time measurement: calendars and clocks
Chronometry is the science of measuring time and it comes in two different forms: the calendar and the clock. when seeking to measure a duration of less than one day, the clock is used. measuring something that is longer requires the use of a calendar. Let’s examine how these two fundamental tools came to be.
1. a brief history of the calendar
The first calendars were used 6000 years ago, based on artifacts discovered in the paleolithic era, and depended on the phases of the moon. Known as lunar calendars, these early versions had twelve to thirteen months per year. however, these calendars were not entirely accurate because they did not take into account the fact that a year has approximately 365.24 days.
Calendars measure days in whole numbers, so a method called collation was introduced that adds a leap day, week, or month to the calendar when necessary to maintain measurement accuracy. Julius Caesar decreed in 45 B.C. that the Roman empire would use a solar calendar and became known as the Julian calendar.
This version still suffered from inaccuracy because the collation it used caused annual solstices and equinoxes to change measurements by as much as 11 minutes per year. Pope Gregory XIII introduced a second type of calendar in 1582. It was known as the Gregorian calendar and is now the most widely used version today.
2. a brief history of the watch
Watchmaking is the study of devices used to measure time. This quest dates back to 1500 BC when the Egyptians created the first sundial. This stationary device uses a shadow cast by the sun to measure the passing of the hours throughout the day. however, these devices were only accurate during the day.
A more accurate solution was something called a water clock which was also used by the ancient Egyptians. The actual origin of these devices is unknown, but along with sundials, they were the first tools used to measure time.
The water clock worked by creating a steady stream of water that could be used to measure the passage of time. however, it required constant maintenance, otherwise the water would run out. many ancient civilizations were very focused on keeping accurate measurements of time because they used it to track their astronomical findings.
Water clocks were used constantly until the Middle Ages. the use of incense, candles and hourglasses was also prevalent. Although mechanical clocks appeared as early as the 11th century, it wasn’t until people like Galileo Galilei and Christiaan Huygens created new methods, like the pendulum clock, that they became reliable.
Today the most accurate tool for measuring time is atomic clocks. these amazing devices can maintain perfect accuracy for millions of years. In fact, they are so accurate that they are used to set other clocks and GPS systems. Instead of using mechanical or repetitive methods, these clocks measure atoms at incredibly low temperatures.
an atomic clock in boulder, colorado called nist-f1 is used to set standard time for all of the united states. It is located at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. the precision of this clock means that it will not drift by a single second for at least 100 million years. all of this is based on the internationally defined standard for what constitutes a single second:
“the second is the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom”.
By measuring these cesium atoms at incredibly low temperatures, atomic clocks can track time almost perfectly by this established standard.
international measures of time
Our modern society requires that we have an established standard for how we measure time. The most basic means of doing this is known as international atomic time (tai), and it measures seconds, minutes, and hours by coordinating atomic clocks around the world.
Since 1972 we have used Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC. it follows the tai standard with slight shifts known as leap seconds to ensure it stays in sync with the earth’s rotation. this standard replaced greenwich mean time (gmt), but the two terms are still used interchangeably.
the reason for the replacement was that the gmt method used telescopes and solar time to set the standard instead of the more precise method of atomic clocks. Even though the time standard changes, the location of Greenwich is still used as the basis for measuring coordinates.
Although the measurement of time is standardized throughout the world, there is also a means of defining the exact time of day in various regions known as time zones. this is another internationally observed standard that offsets utc based on location.
These zones were established for legal, business, and social reasons and are typically located along US country or state boundaries. uu. For the most part, these zones offset time by a whole number of hours, but in some cases the change is as little as thirty or forty-five minutes.
The concept of these time zones was first suggested in 1858 in a book written by Quirico Filopanti called Miranda! this concept was not used, but it laid the groundwork for others to follow. The invention of them is attributed to Sir Sanford Fleming, but even the concept of it was greatly modified into what we use today.
The adoption of time zones was slow and gradual. The last country to implement the use of the current standard was Nepal in 1986. All modern countries today use time zones in some way, shape or form. the idea is the same, as is the standard measurement of time, but the implementation of them varies.
For example, China and India use a single time zone even though their countries are wider than the fifteen degrees of longitude that normally dictate a time zone.
a tool for history
With technology and research we have continued to grow and expand our understanding of time, but we still have many unanswered questions. however, what we do have are very specific methods to measure it around the world and now is the time to bring you all that information and more.
Our tools are always up to date and our database of information is constantly expanding and growing. we are the penultimate resource now and in the future.
