16-Mar-2019: Should India have two time zones?
Over the years, various citizens and political leaders have debated whether India should have two separate time zones. The demand is based on the huge difference in daylight times between the country’s longitudinal extremes, and the costs associated with following the same time zone. Those arguing against the idea, on the other hand, cite impracticability — particularly the risk of railway accidents, given the need to reset times at every crossing from one time zone into another.
Now, a proposal for two time zones has come from India’s national timekeeper itself. Scientists at the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research’s National Physical Laboratory (CSIR-NPL), which maintains Indian Standard Time, have published a research article describing the necessity of two time zones, with the new one an hour ahead of the existing time zone.
Published in Current Science, the article adds new arguments to the debate. It identifies where the two time zones be demarcated from each other — at the “chicken neck” that connects the Northeast to the rest of India, an area that is spatially narrow and reduces the possibility of railway accidents, it says. The article also puts a figure to the country’s potential savings in energy consumption — 20 million kWh a year — if it does follow two time zones.
If lines of longitude are drawn exactly a degree apart, they will divide the Earth into 360 zones. Because the Earth spins 360° in 24 hours, a longitudinal distance of 15° represents a time separation of 1 hour, and 1° represents 4 minutes. Theoretically, the time zone followed by any place should relate to its longitudinal distance from any other place. Political boundaries, however, mean that time zones are often demarcated by bent lines rather than straight lines of longitude. This is “legal time”, as defined by a country’s law.
The geographic “zero line” runs through Greenwich, London. It identifies GMT, now known as Universal Coordinated Time (UTC), which is maintained by the Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) in France. Indian Standard Time, maintained by CSIR-NPL, is based on a line of longitude that runs through Mirzapur in UP. At 82°33’E, the line is 82.5° east of Greenwich, or 5.5 hours (5 hours 30 minutes) ahead of UCT. While India follows one IST, the United States follows several time zones across its breadth.
India extends from 68°7’E to 97°25’E, with the spread of 29° representing almost two hours from the geographic perspective. This has led to the argument that early sunrise in the easternmost parts — the Northeast — causes the loss of many daylight hours by the time offices or educational institutions open, and that early sunset, for its part, leads to higher consumption of electricity.
In March, in reply to a question in Parliament, the government said it has not taken any decision on separate time zones. A committee set up in 2002 did not recommend two time zones because of the complexities involved. It had cited the same committee’s findings in the Guwahati High Court, which last year dismissed a public interest litigation seeking a direction to the Centre to have a separate time zone for the Northeast.
The research paper proposes to call the two time zones IST-I (UTC + 5.30 h) and IST-II (UTC + 6.30 h). The proposed line of demarcation is at 89°52’E, the narrow border between Assam and West Bengal. States west of the line would continue to follow IST (to be called IST-I). States east of the line — Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Andaman & Nicobar Islands —would follow IST-II. As the railway signals have not yet been fully automated in the country, the border between the two time zones should have a very narrow spatial-width with minimum number of train stations so that the train timings while crossing the border can be managed manually without any untoward incidents.
The researchers estimated energy savings at 20 million kWh a year based on a formula explained in the article. They also analysed the importance of synchronising office hours — as well as biological activities — to sunrise and sunset timings.
To make the idea possible, CSIR-NPL would need a second laboratory in the new time zone. This would consist of ‘Primary Time Ensemble-II’, traceable to the UTC at BIPM in France. While the article asserts that CSIR-NPL already has the technical expertise to duplicate its existing facility, it also acknowledges that the move would require legislative sanction.
20-Dec-2018: Govt rejects demand for different time zone for northeastern states for 'strategic reasons'
A panel formed to examine the possibility of a separate time zone for the northeastern states, recommended against it for "strategic reasons".
The debate for a separate time zone for the northeast has been in existence for as long as the history of modern India goes. Amidst the pros and cons of having two time zones for the country, no implementable solution has been proposed so far. Back in October this year, the CSIR-National Physical Laboratory (CSIR-NPL) and the National Measurement Institute (NMI) of India explored the possibility and also proposed an implementable solution.
In a written response to a question on demands from the northeastern states for having a separate time zone, Union Science and Technology Minister Harsh Vardhan said such requests have been made on the ground that sunrise and sunset timings in these parts are much earlier than official working hours.
The matter was examined by a High-Level Committee (HLC) comprising the secretary of the Department of Science and Technology and chief secretary of Tripura.
The custodian of Indian Standard Time (IST) proposed two time zones IST-I and IST-II for the country as follows:
- IST-I would be same as current IST, that is, UTC +5:30
- IST-II would be UTC +6:30 owing to the difference of one hour between eastern and western part of the country
The borderline between two time zones would have been 89°52'E, the narrow border between Assam and West Bengal.
States west of this line would have followed IST-I (UTC +5:30) while states east of this line (Assam, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram, Tripura, Andaman & Nicobar Islands) would have followed IST-II (UTC +6:30).
Once approved, the implementation would require the establishment of a laboratory for 'Primary Time Ensemble II' generating IST-II in any of the north-eastern states, which would be equivalent to the existing 'Primary Time Ensemble-I' at CSIR-NPL, New Delhi.
What is a time zone?
Earth is divided into 360 vertical lines or the longitudes. A shift in every longitude gives a time difference of four minutes; so, the planet is divided into 24 time zones.
Now, if you would ask why does a longitude creates a time difference of four minutes, here's some mathematics for you:
Twenty four hours of a day are divided by 360 degrees -- a complete revolution of the earth on its axis.
So, a distance of 15 degrees on the map amounts to a difference of one hour, and one degree on the map amounts to four minutes.
Longitude is the angular distance between a point on any Meridian and the prime meridian in Greenwich. The time at Greenwich is called as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
Need for two time zones
India extends from 68°7'E to 97°25'E, with the spread of 29 degrees, which amounts to almost two-hours from the geographical perspective.
For decades, legislators, activists, industrialists and ordinary citizens from India's northeast have complained about the effect of IST on their lives.
Following are the factors which compelled the people from northeast to demand a different time zone:
- Loss of daylight hours and excess electricity usage
Since the sun rises as early as four in the morning and in winter it sets by four in the evening, the region loses most of its daytime hours before the government offices and schools are opened, thus ending up with more electricity usage. A different time zone would allow sunsets to take place later, allowing the citizens to better use their daylight hours.
Last year, the CM of Arunachal Pradesh Pema Khandu also said that they get up as early as 4 am, several daylight hours are wasted as government offices open only at 10 am and close by 4 pm. He had asked to advance clocks by half an hour to one hour, putting northeast India in a GMT +6 time zone.
- Effect on biological clocks of citizens
The longitudinal extremes of the country are assigned a single time zone which not only creates the loss of daylight hours but also creates problems relating to the biological clock.
The 2017 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was awarded to Jeffrey C Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W Young for their research which elucidated that plants, animals, and humans adapt their biological rhythm so that it is synchronized with Earth's revolution.
They established that biological species are ruled by internal clocks (biological clocks) that run on a 24-h light-dark cycle in synchronization with the sun. Due to this synchronization humans fall asleep at night and plants synthesize chlorophyll in the presence of sunlight.
The biological clock is so active that when we move from one time zone to another, it forces us to sleep at an unusual time. This is commonly known as jetlag and it requires few days to resynchronize our biological clock with the local solar timings.
Concerns over two time zones
If there weren't concerns over the existence of two time zones, the issue would not have been unsolved even after so many years.
One reason is the possibility of human error in changing time when crossing the time zone, which may end in train accidents if railway employees make it.
Having two time zones may dispel some of the problems but may end up creating more, not to mention the sense of alienation of northeast region.
Offices, banks and other things as such that need to be constantly interconnected, would find it difficult to operate in the same sphere.
Having more than one time zone in a country is not a new or unheard of. Russia alone is divided into nine time zones.
17-Feb-2019: Scientists discover massive mountains under Earth’s crust
Scientists have discovered massive mountains in the Earth’s mantle, an advance that may change our understanding of how the planet was formed.
The Earth has three layers: a crust, mantle and core, which is subdivided into an inner and outer core. While that is not wrong, it does leave out several other layers that scientists have identified within the Earth.
In a study published in the journal Science, scientists used data from an enormous earthquake in Bolivia to find mountains and other topography on a layer located 660 km straight down, which separates the upper and lower mantle.
Lacking a formal name for this layer, the researchers simply call it “the 660-km boundary.”
To peer deep into the Earth, scientists from the Princeton University in the U.S. and the Institute of Geodesy and Geophysics in China, used the most powerful waves on the planet, which are generated by massive earthquakes.
Data from earthquakes that are magnitude 7.0 or higher send out shockwaves in all directions that can travel through the core to the other side of the planet — and back again.
For this study, the key data came from waves picked up after a magnitude 8.2 earthquake — the second-largest deep earthquake ever recorded — that shook Bolivia in 1994. Scientists used powerful computers to simulate the complicated behaviour of scattering waves in the deep Earth.
The technology depends on a fundamental property of waves: their ability to bend and bounce. Just as light waves can bounce (reflect) off a mirror or bend (refract) when passing through a prism, earthquake waves travel straight through homogenous rocks but reflect or refract when they encounter any boundary or roughness.
Scientists investigated the scattered seismic waves traveling inside the Earth to constrain the roughness of the Earth’s 660-km boundary. The researchers were surprised by just how rough that boundary is — rougher than the surface layer that we all live on. In other words, stronger topography than the Rocky Mountains or the Appalachians is present at the 660-km boundary.
Their statistical model did not allow for precise height determinations, but there’s a chance that these mountains are bigger than anything on the surface of the Earth.
The roughness was not equally distributed, either; just as the crust’s surface has smooth ocean floors and massive mountains, the 660-km boundary has rough areas and smooth patches.
The researchers also examined a layer 410 km down, at the top of the mid-mantle “transition zone,” and they did not find similar roughness. The presence of roughness on the 660-km boundary has significant implications for understanding how our planet formed and evolved.
27-Dec-2018: Dal lake freezes after Srinagar records coldest night in 11 years
Water bodies, including world famous Dal Lake, and taps were frozen after the minimum temperature witnessed further drop and settled at minus 7.6 degree, coldest in December in 11 years in summer capital, Srinagar.
The earlier coldest night in Srinagar was recorded on December 24 when the minimum temperature was minus 6.8 degree.
Majority water bodies were frozen in Srinagar and outskirts due to drop in the temperature. Stagnated water in open fields, roads and other places had also frozen. Water taps were also frozen, affecting water supply.
The famed Dal Lake, major tourist attraction in the city, was also frozen, particularly near banks and interior areas. People, including tourists, could be seen visiting the Dal Lake area this morning to take photographs over frozen surface. Some people were seen throwing stones and paper balls on frozen surface. 'Shikarawalas' were struggling to move forward on frozen surface of the lake.