Alas, this is not a post about the wondrous miracle of time travel. The Doctor has not come to whisk me away in the Tardis to marvelous places and distant times. It is only a brief commentary on time zones.
In a proper use of time and space, Alaska would have five time zones. Time changes infinitely and incrementally as longitude changes, that is, as one moves east to west (or vice versa). At the equator, every degree of longitude change is equal to 60 minutes of time change (1/60 of a degree = 1 minute).
The full east-west span of Alaska is approximately 42 degrees, but since the longitude lines (the ones that run north-south around the globe) get closer together as they reach the poles, there isn't a time difference of 42+ hours between the tip of Southeast Alaska and the end of the Aleutian chain. It used to be that the official time difference between those two locations was five hours. However, back when I was a kid (1983 to be exact) the practicalities of living in the modern world overcame geographic sensibilities, and four of Alaska's time zones were compressed into one (Alaska Standard Time). The western-most Aleutian Islands still have the option of using AST or Hawaii-Aleutian Time (which is one hour behind AST). I understand that Annette Island, home to the Metlakatla Indian Community, has opted to use Pacific Standard Time, but that is such a small community that it doesn't really affect anyone else. Of course, the same is true of the Aleutian Island communities.
The result of this time-zone compression in Alaska is that, much to my surprise, the time in Peru is only three hours ahead of that in Alaska rather than the five hours one might think it would be if one looked at the longitudinal span. It seems like a place so very distant should be much more distant in time as well, but because Peru is far south of Alaska rather than far east, the time difference is not great. So, when I am considering my lunch options in Puno or Cusco next week, Rowan will be getting ready for a mid-morning snack at school.
Of course, were I traveling a month later, the time difference would be four hours. Alaskans haven't gotten smart enough yet to demand that we no longer use Daylight Savings Time, but the Peruvians have. When we fall back an hour on the first Sunday in November, Peruvians will stay just where it is. Smart people, they are.
