Rob Seaman said: >> It is already commonplace. > Well, no. The geographic center of California is about exactly 8 hours (120 > degrees) west of Greenwich. Los Angeles is a couple of degrees East and San > Francisco a similar distance West of this meridian. Even for California > plate tectonics can be ignored, and PST will always remain naturally 8 hours > from GMT.
Wrong. Yes, the "mean solar time for 120 west" will always remain naturally 8 hours from the "mean solar time for 0 east/west". But it could well be that neither of those is the civil time for anywhere. Consider China. It decided that the civil convenience of keeping the whole country on one time zone was more important that the civil convenience of having the fictional mean sun be at the zenith at 12:00 everywhere. So even though it stretches from 73 east to 135 east, it uses the time zone of 120 east throughout. It is quite possible that a future USA government might decide that this same balance of civil conveniences has swung, and decide to move the whole country to the time zone of 90 west throughout. At that point PST will be, in essence, what you now call CST, and more to the point will be only 6 hours from GMT. -- Clive D.W. Feather | If you lie to the compiler, Email: cl...@davros.org | it will get its revenge. Web: http://www.davros.org | - Henry Spencer Mobile: +44 7973 377646 _______________________________________________ LEAPSECS mailing list LEAPSECS@leapsecond.com http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
