Vadsø, Norway mayor wants 26-hour days
On March 20 Wenche Pedersen, the mayor of Vadsø municipality, Norway, asked[1] the European Commission to issue a directive allowing Norway to create a separate time zone for the northern part of Norway. Days in the new time zone would contain 26 hours instead of the usual 24. This request is part of the "MOREtime" project. Mayor Pedersen wrote:
... we aim to celebrate and promote this unique way of life, offering individuals the opportunity to enjoy more quality time engaging in activities such as fishing, hunting, learning new languages, or simply being with loved ones. By having our own certified time zone within the EU, we hope to attract more young people, not only from Norway but also from around the world, to discover and settle in this adventurous area.
Recently the mayor's proposal has been covered by several major news organizations. When asked how the 26-hour day would actually work, the mayor replied "We haven't thought a lot about that. The clock will go from 12 to 13 ... and we have to see how this will go. I don't think they're going to say yes so we haven't thought about all the details."[2] Longtime readers of the time zone mailing list might remember that in 2019 a resident of Sommarøy, Norway petitioned his parliamentarian to abolish civil time in his town, something that also made the news.[3] However, the Sommarøy proposal was by a private individual and was easily implementable via tzdata by creating a new UTC or LMT zone with abbreviation "-00" or "LMT", whereas the Vadsø proposal is by the mayor, and would require changes to tzcode and would therefore be considerably harder to support. Although it's unlikely that the Vadsø proposal will go anywhere, it's helpful to think of how timekeeping changes like this might be accommodated by the TZDB project, as similar proposals might happen in the future. I see several ways to implement 26-hour days, falling into two major categories. Category I: Shorten civil-time hours so that there are 26 civil-time hours in a standard-length (SI) day. Four possible ways to do this are: A. Civil-time seconds are 12/13 s (i.e., 12/13 of an SI second, or about 0.923 s), so that civil-time minutes and hours are both 12/13 of their SI counterparts. B. Civil-time seconds are the same as before, but civil-time minutes are 60 * 12/13 s (i.e., about 55.38 s). C. Civil-time seconds and minutes are the same as before, but civil-time hours are 60 * 12/13 min (i.e., about 55.38 SI minutes). D. Civil-time minutes are 60 * sqrt(12/13) s (about 57.65 s), and civil-time hours are 60 * sqrt(12/13) civil-time minutes (i.e., about 57.65 civil-time minutes). Category II: Adjust day lengths so that all or most days contain 26 SI hours. Three possibilities here are: E. Civil-time days are 26 SI hours, and the calendar gradually falls further and further behind the Gregorian calendar. F. Civil-time days are 26 SI hours, but skip every 13th day so that days stay roughly synchronized with the Gregorian calendar. G. At the end of every day, move clocks backward two hours, from 24:00 to 22:00, so that timestamps from 22:00:00 through 23:59:59 repeat. Do this consistently for eleven days, thus moving clocks backward a total of 22 hours. On the twelfth day move clocks forward 22 hours instead, from 24:00 to 22:00 the next day. Repeat this cycle indefinitely. This way, eleven days out of thirteen contain 26 hours, and the next two days combined also contain 26 hours - 24 hours in the twelfth day and 2 hours in the thirteenth. Of these methods something like (G) would be the most compatible with computerized timekeeping, as (G) conforms to POSIX-1.202x Draft 4.1[4] whereas (A) through (F) do not. (G) avoids timestamps like 25:30; G's hours, minutes or seconds are all of the usual lengths; and (G) contains only transitions that are like daylight-saving transitions that computerized timekeeping can already deal with. Although a downside of (G) is that at times the sun will be at its zenith at midnight, I assume Vadsø residents are already accustomed to midnight suns so this disadvantage is relatively minor for them. Another downside of (G) is that clocks will never go "from 12 to 13" as the mayor requested, but given the major technical difficulties of (A) through (F) I hope the mayor would appreciate that (G) may be the best we can practically hope for in today's standardized and computerized world. Unfortunately even (G) would require some changes to tzcode and tzdata to become practical, and it would take many years for these changes to propagate to devices in common use in Vadsø. So, unless Vadsø residents are prepared to change their clocks by hand every day for the next several years, it does not appear that the mayor's proposal will be practical any time soon. I am sending this email to the time zone mailing list, as perhaps someone on the list can think of even better ways to implement the mayor's request. I am also cc'ing this email to Mayor Pedersen to give her a heads-up about this analysis, should it ever be needed in Vadsø. [1]: https://kommunikasjon.ntb.no/files/17848798/18066114/57109/no [2]: https://www.politico.eu/article/norway-arctic-region-asks-eu-commission-for-... [3]: https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2019-June/028154.html [4]: https://www.opengroup.org/austin/
On 4/13/24 16:41:47, Paul Eggert via tz wrote:
On March 20 Wenche Pedersen, the mayor of Vadsø municipality, Norway, asked[1] the European Commission to issue a directive allowing Norway to create a separate time zone for the northern part of Norway. Days in the new time zone would contain 26 hours instead of the usual 24. .<snip!> I think this is being reported 12 days too late. See also: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar>
There are reported harmful health effects of abrupt Daylight Saving transitions, particularly in Spring. But even as some Web services (Google?) (Amazon?) "smear" leap seconds over several hours to avoid transients harmful to server operations, why not likewise smear the Daylight Saving transitions over several weeks to mitigate the psychological and physiological harm?
[1]: https://kommunikasjon.ntb.no/files/17848798/18066114/57109/no [2]: https://www.politico.eu/article/norway-arctic-region-asks-eu-commission-for-... [3]: https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2019-June/028154.html [4]: https://www.opengroup.org/austin/
-- gil
2024-04-14 00:41 skrev Paul Eggert via tz:
On March 20 Wenche Pedersen, the mayor of Vadsø municipality, Norway, asked[1] the European Commission to issue a directive allowing Norway to create a separate time zone for the northern part of Norway. Days in the new time zone would contain 26 hours instead of the usual 24.
What seems unclear to me is whether these 26 hours are then supposed to be shorter than the normal 24 hours, or if the day is supposed to be extended by two hours? This far north, there is not that much difference between day and night during the middle of summer [1] (or, for that matter, during the middle of winter). This would introduce its own set of problems, as how to correlate weekdays and dates between places where days are of different lengths, but I guess that can already be an issue in places where timezones meet today. -- \\// Peter - http://www.softwolves.pp.se/ [1] Which is another reason why DST makes no sense in countries like Norway and Sweden; does it really matter whether the sun is set between 3 and 5 AM or between 2 and 4 AM?
I'd go with variable-length hours: 24 hours of 55 minutes and two (13 a.m. and 13 p.m.) of 60. @dashdashado On Sat, Apr 13, 2024 at 6:42 PM Paul Eggert via tz <tz@iana.org> wrote:
On March 20 Wenche Pedersen, the mayor of Vadsø municipality, Norway, asked[1] the European Commission to issue a directive allowing Norway to create a separate time zone for the northern part of Norway. Days in the new time zone would contain 26 hours instead of the usual 24.
This request is part of the "MOREtime" project. Mayor Pedersen wrote:
... we aim to celebrate and promote this unique way of life, offering individuals the opportunity to enjoy more quality time engaging in activities such as fishing, hunting, learning new languages, or simply being with loved ones. By having our own certified time zone within the EU, we hope to attract more young people, not only from Norway but also from around the world, to discover and settle in this adventurous area.
Recently the mayor's proposal has been covered by several major news organizations. When asked how the 26-hour day would actually work, the mayor replied "We haven't thought a lot about that. The clock will go from 12 to 13 ... and we have to see how this will go. I don't think they're going to say yes so we haven't thought about all the details."[2]
Longtime readers of the time zone mailing list might remember that in 2019 a resident of Sommarøy, Norway petitioned his parliamentarian to abolish civil time in his town, something that also made the news.[3] However, the Sommarøy proposal was by a private individual and was easily implementable via tzdata by creating a new UTC or LMT zone with abbreviation "-00" or "LMT", whereas the Vadsø proposal is by the mayor, and would require changes to tzcode and would therefore be considerably harder to support.
Although it's unlikely that the Vadsø proposal will go anywhere, it's helpful to think of how timekeeping changes like this might be accommodated by the TZDB project, as similar proposals might happen in the future. I see several ways to implement 26-hour days, falling into two major categories.
Category I: Shorten civil-time hours so that there are 26 civil-time hours in a standard-length (SI) day. Four possible ways to do this are:
A. Civil-time seconds are 12/13 s (i.e., 12/13 of an SI second, or about 0.923 s), so that civil-time minutes and hours are both 12/13 of their SI counterparts.
B. Civil-time seconds are the same as before, but civil-time minutes are 60 * 12/13 s (i.e., about 55.38 s).
C. Civil-time seconds and minutes are the same as before, but civil-time hours are 60 * 12/13 min (i.e., about 55.38 SI minutes).
D. Civil-time minutes are 60 * sqrt(12/13) s (about 57.65 s), and civil-time hours are 60 * sqrt(12/13) civil-time minutes (i.e., about 57.65 civil-time minutes).
Category II: Adjust day lengths so that all or most days contain 26 SI hours. Three possibilities here are:
E. Civil-time days are 26 SI hours, and the calendar gradually falls further and further behind the Gregorian calendar.
F. Civil-time days are 26 SI hours, but skip every 13th day so that days stay roughly synchronized with the Gregorian calendar.
G. At the end of every day, move clocks backward two hours, from 24:00 to 22:00, so that timestamps from 22:00:00 through 23:59:59 repeat. Do this consistently for eleven days, thus moving clocks backward a total of 22 hours. On the twelfth day move clocks forward 22 hours instead, from 24:00 to 22:00 the next day. Repeat this cycle indefinitely. This way, eleven days out of thirteen contain 26 hours, and the next two days combined also contain 26 hours - 24 hours in the twelfth day and 2 hours in the thirteenth.
Of these methods something like (G) would be the most compatible with computerized timekeeping, as (G) conforms to POSIX-1.202x Draft 4.1[4] whereas (A) through (F) do not. (G) avoids timestamps like 25:30; G's hours, minutes or seconds are all of the usual lengths; and (G) contains only transitions that are like daylight-saving transitions that computerized timekeeping can already deal with.
Although a downside of (G) is that at times the sun will be at its zenith at midnight, I assume Vadsø residents are already accustomed to midnight suns so this disadvantage is relatively minor for them. Another downside of (G) is that clocks will never go "from 12 to 13" as the mayor requested, but given the major technical difficulties of (A) through (F) I hope the mayor would appreciate that (G) may be the best we can practically hope for in today's standardized and computerized world.
Unfortunately even (G) would require some changes to tzcode and tzdata to become practical, and it would take many years for these changes to propagate to devices in common use in Vadsø. So, unless Vadsø residents are prepared to change their clocks by hand every day for the next several years, it does not appear that the mayor's proposal will be practical any time soon.
I am sending this email to the time zone mailing list, as perhaps someone on the list can think of even better ways to implement the mayor's request. I am also cc'ing this email to Mayor Pedersen to give her a heads-up about this analysis, should it ever be needed in Vadsø.
[1]: https://kommunikasjon.ntb.no/files/17848798/18066114/57109/no [2]:
https://www.politico.eu/article/norway-arctic-region-asks-eu-commission-for-... [3]: https://mm.icann.org/pipermail/tz/2019-June/028154.html [4]: https://www.opengroup.org/austin/
According to POLITICO it's extending the day https://www.politico.eu/article/norway-arctic-region-asks-eu-commission-for-...
By extending the length of the days, Pedersen hopes that more people will be inspired to move to the remote region. Ensuring that the area is populated is “more important than ever” in light of Russia’s war against Ukraine, Pedersen added.
I don't think anyone is asking for shorter hours, they want longer days. The idea is to still sleep for 8 hours per "day", but then have (in this case) 18 hours left, instead of 16 hours left. Over a 13 day (312 hour) period, you sleep for 96 (12*8) hours - 30.7%, vs the 104 hours wen using the 24 hour cycle - so 33.3%, in effect gaining 8 hours of waking time per 13 days. What would make (slightly) more sense (it's still pretty out there) would be a 28 hour day because that syncs up with the week, so you just lose 1 day per week, rather than it shifting relative to the week. Of course, you still have the difficulty of syncing with the calendar. See the attached image, cropped from https://xkcd.com/320/, CC BY-NC 2.5. [cid:613c4132-f3d8-4a43-b5e0-1350368ce7f8] Of course, in the far north (and south), the length of the night can vary from 0 to 100% of the time, so this 26 (or a 28 hour cycle) is less drastic. Looking into this sort of thing might be sensible so we're "more" ready for the likely eventual need compare time on Earth vs on Mars. Tim ________________________________ From: tz <tz-bounces@iana.org> on behalf of Peter Krefting via tz <tz@iana.org> Sent: 14 April 2024 11:11 To: Time zone mailing list <tz@iana.org> Subject: Re: [tz] Vadsø, Norway mayor wants 26-hour days WARNING: This email has originated from outside of EkkoSense. Please treat any links or attachments with caution. 2024-04-14 00:41 skrev Paul Eggert via tz:
On March 20 Wenche Pedersen, the mayor of Vadsø municipality, Norway, asked[1] the European Commission to issue a directive allowing Norway to create a separate time zone for the northern part of Norway. Days in the new time zone would contain 26 hours instead of the usual 24.
What seems unclear to me is whether these 26 hours are then supposed to be shorter than the normal 24 hours, or if the day is supposed to be extended by two hours? This far north, there is not that much difference between day and night during the middle of summer [1] (or, for that matter, during the middle of winter). This would introduce its own set of problems, as how to correlate weekdays and dates between places where days are of different lengths, but I guess that can already be an issue in places where timezones meet today. -- \\// Peter - https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.softwolves.pp.se%2F&data=05%7C02%7CTim.Hitchins%40ekkosense.co.uk%7C42ba1be16d7542007b9408dc5c6b65cb%7C0fadb027642941ef8483b513e74ad1bf%7C0%7C0%7C638486863551982592%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=C%2BX%2BdK%2FH9CxCsL3LEdb6qK7eZ5sX9K0b8Bm78oQDkOk%3D&reserved=0<http://www.softwolves.pp.se/> [1] Which is another reason why DST makes no sense in countries like Norway and Sweden; does it really matter whether the sun is set between 3 and 5 AM or between 2 and 4 AM? ****************************************************************** The information in this E-Mail is confidential and may be legally privileged. It may not represent the views of EkkoSense. It is intended solely for the addressees. Access to this E-Mail by anyone else is unauthorised. If you are not the intended recipient, any disclosure, copying, distribution or any action taken or omitted to be taken in reliance on it, is prohibited and may be unlawful. Any unauthorised recipient should advise the sender immediately of the error in transmission. Unless specifically stated otherwise, this email (or any attachments to it) is not an offer capable of acceptance or acceptance of an offer and it does not form part of a binding contractual agreement. ******************************************************************
participants (6)
-
Arthur David Olson -
Doug Ewell -
Paul Eggert -
Paul Gilmartin -
Peter Krefting -
Tim Hitchins