At least that's the ideal case in reality, the world time zones map is more complicated and requires a longer explanation. Time zones are, as we said previously, geographical areas with less than a 1h difference in their solar time.

In addition to the list of all the world time zones, we included some comments and major cities in each of the time zones in the time converter, as well as a world time zones map for further reference in case you need it. It is not easy to memorize all abbreviations for each of the world's time zones and what cities and countries belong to which time zone but, luckily for you, this knowledge is not required because we have compiled a list with all time zones available in this world clock converter. Look for the UTC time zone where the answer will be already displayed.Input the date and time we want to convert from into the box labeled EST (American time zone corresponding to New York time zone) in the time converter.Look for the New York time zone abbreviation in the text below.Let's illustrate how you can use it as a world clock converter by looking at a specific example in which we want to convert the date and time from the New York time zone (US time zone called EST) to the UTC time zone: Using the time converter is very easy and doesn't require a big knowledge of the different world time zones. are always referred to and defined by the time difference with respect to the UTC time zone. The rest of the time zones, be them American time zones, European time zones, or Asian time zones. As we will see next, the most important time zone is the UTC time zone, which is the reference point for all other time zones. In reality, there are country borders, politics, and economic interests and fights, which means that not all countries actually keep their geographical time zone, and some even made their own with half an hour difference.Īll in all, this is a universally accepted and very effective way to coordinate the entire world despite the differences in solar time. Changes in 'clock-time' are done abruptly in 1h steps around the globe according to the position of the country, avoiding having millions of time zones with very small differences between them. The world time zones try to group areas with the same solar time and give them a common date and time. In an attempt to organize this difference while still keeping a certain relation between the date and time with the position of the sun in the sky, the time zones were born. In reality, the Earth is round, which means that the position of the sun at a given time depends on our position on the Earth. From this, one could tell the time by just looking at the sun and its position in the sky. The movement of the sun in the sky is periodic, so a complete rotation of the sun (in reality, this movement is due to the Earth spinning and not the sun moving) takes what we call a day by dividing that period of time by 24, we get hours. The date was more or less given by the apparent movement of the stars in the sky, whilst the time was taken by looking at the sun.

Historically, the way we humans have kept track of the date and time has been by looking at the sky. However, that leads to the question of how do you define a day. Another way of timekeeping could be counting days instead of seconds, like what you can do with the day counter. Computers deal with time using what is called Unix time or epoch time, which basically means counting seconds from a fixed date and time, as we have explained in depth in the Unix time converter. There are many ways in which we can keep track of time. Many might be asking this question, and we think it's important to answer it to at least make a point for the use of the time zones converter.

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