Is it possible to skip between days without changing hours by traveling West at 330mph?

score:15

Accepted answer

Your base facts are off. It is not the diameter of the Earth that is important, it is the Earth's circumference. At the equator, the Earth's circumference is approximately 40,000 km. Thus, to achieve what you suggest, you would need to travel at about 1,700 km/hour or 1,100 mph. This is much faster than any current commercial aircraft. This is also Mach 1.4 (i.e. faster than sound).

You could, however, circumnavigate the Earth closer to either pole, making your journey much shorter. The timezones do reach all the way north and south, at least in theory. Close enough to the pole and you could walk!

You do run into another issue though, and that is that the timezones are not uniform in size. Some are much larger and their size depends on your exact latitude. So, while you might be able to keep the sun in a fixed position in the sky (relative to yourself), the local time may jump around a fair bit.

Upvote:2

It all dependes on your definition of what's the time inside an airplane when traveling across timezone boundaries.

It seems you consider the timezone of the landmass (or ocean) right below the airplane. That is an uncommon definition (at least for me), as it would force you to adjust your clock every hour, sometinhg I don't see traveler's inside an airplane doing. I usually adjust it once the airplane's doors are closed.

The real problem seems to be that hours within a day are a social definition and not a formal one. just think of daylight savings time, when a whole country accepts to change the hour. Another evidence that time in a day is not a formal definition is that timezones do consider country's boundaries, which are also a social convention.

Bottomline is, I guess there is no correct answer to this question, but considering your implicit assumption of time inside an airplane, it is plausible to assume 1 o´clock would never come!

Upvote:3

Yes. You may want to check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Date_Line for further details. By the way, no need to go that fast. Just go close enough to either of the poles, a short distance will allow you to select a comfortable walking speed.

To make @Gayot Fow happy, I should add what @Kris has already pointed out. You're wrong, so wrong. Still, I would answer your question with "yes", since your main point is the constant hour of the day, not the speed (which does not matter anyway as per my above reasoning).

More post

Search Posts

Related post