The Time Now: What Time Is It
Your current local time
What is The Time Now?
The universe we inhabit is filled with cycles. Night becomes day, planets rotate around the Sun, seasons change, and so much more. We use these cycles to measure the passage of time, but like the universe's cycles, that was only the beginning.
We've also created time zones, calculations down to the millisecond, and various ways to measure them all. Our lives revolve around time which is why we've created a rich and varied database of tools and information that we like to call The Time Now.
The Time Now is an accurate tool providing multiple time-related services, various in-depth articles, and more. You can find out what the
is, in more than a hundred thousand cities around the world, as well as the UTC/GMT offset, the .
You will know whether each location observes Daylight Saving Time (DST) or Summer Time, right now or the near future. This database is updated with each new decision of governments or astronomical institutions.
in most cities of the world. You have access to the current conditions, the 48-hour forecast, the 2-week forecast, and an hour-by-hour temperature forecast. Most websites would stop there, but we also provide you with the sunrise and sunset times, the day's length, the moon phases, and even the moonrise and moonset. Enjoy the many daily updates of these data, up to every fifteen minutes.
We've also provided an
that gives detailed information about the
. We've all been stargazers at some point in our lives but now you can learn about the planets, and their moons.
Additional sections provide information about , , , , and space probes. If all of that knowledge fascinates you, we'll also provide information on
The Time Now also offers comprehensive local business directories with opening and closing times in many countries, such as , , , , , , , ,
and . Each country's local business directory is available from its translated version of the website.
In case you need a specific conversion, we provide many useful tools such as:
that will help you find the time difference between two cities or two time zones.
, to find the better time for a meeting with people around the world.
A , to help you make a phone call between two locations.
A , to find the air distance between two cities.
A , to convert more than 150 currencies worldwide.
The Time Now is currently available in 29 languages. It is used by millions of people worldwide each month as a valuable resource for information, knowledge, and a means of planning and understanding time around the world.
The Scientific and Philosophical Concept of Time
Before one can understand time zones, daylight savings, and other methods of measuring time, it would be best to have a grasp of how science defines this concept. Beyond science, this concept is also highly researched and discussed in the realms of religion and philosophy.
We cannot reach out and grasp it, nor can we watch it pass, and yet time exists anyway.
"a measure in which events can be ordered from the past, through the present, and into the future. It also measures the durations of events and the intervals between them."
What we can see, feel, and touch is known as the spatial dimensions. These are the first, second and third that we all know. Time itself however is referred to in science as the fourth dimension. When measuring things such as velocity and repetition, we are using standard units of measurement such as seconds, minutes, and hours.
This is known as the "operational definition of time." It's purely scientific and doesn't seek to understand the concept in any philosophical way. Of course, the lines begin to blur when scientists try to measure space-time events and other elements of the universe around us.
Trying to truly measure time is a goal that science continues to struggle with. Proper measurement is crucial in all manners of scientific fields like astronomy, navigation, and many more. Currently our international system of measurement is based on events that repeat at certain intervals.
The movement of the sun through the sky, the phases of the moon, the beating of a heart, these are all means of measuring time's apparent flow. In terms of philosophy, there are two major beliefs regarding time and its existence or lack thereof.
This first approach is named after Sir Isaac Newton. He believed that time was a part of the universe, that is exists as a separate dimension independent of our own where events occur in sequence. In one of his works, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, he spoke of absolute time and space.
The concept spoke of a "true and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature flows equally without regard to anything external." Things like motion and the "feel" of time were not true concepts of the term. He called these things "relative time" and they were the only concepts we could grasp as a species.
The other side of the coin is a theory posed by two famous philosophers by the names of Gottfried Leibniz and Immanuel Kant. This secondary theory is more simplistic, it simply holds to the belief that time is not a thing or a place. Given this truth, it cannot be measured accurately or traveled through.
A History of Measuring Time: Calendars and Clocks
Chronometry is the science of measuring time and it comes in two different forms: the calendar and the clock. When seeking to measure a length that is less than a day, the clock is used. Measuring something that is longer requires the use of a calendar. Let's examine how these two fundamental tools came to be.
1. A Brief History of The Calendar
The first calendars were used as early as 6,000 years ago, based on artifacts discovered from the Paleolithic era, and were dependent on the phases of the moon. Known as lunar calendars, these early versions had between twelve and thirteen months to each year. These calendars weren't entirely accurate, however, because they didn't account for the fact that a year is roughly 365.24 days.
Calendars measure days in whole numbers so a method called intercalation was introduced that adds a leap day, week, or month into the calendar when needed to keep the measurements accurate. Julius Caesar decreed in 45 B.C that the Roman Empire would use a solar calendar and it became known as the Julian calendar.
This version still suffered from a lack of accuracy because the intercalation it used caused the annual solstices and equinoxes to throw off the measurements by as much as 11 minutes per year. A second type of calendar was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. This was known as the Gregorian calendar and it is now the most commonly used version today.
2. A Brief History of the Clock
Horology is the study of devices used to measure time. This pursuit dates back to 1500 BC when the Egyptians created the first sundial. This stationary device uses a shadow cast by the sun to measure the passage of hours throughout the day. These devices were accurate only during the day however.
A more accurate solution was something called a water clock that was also used by the ancient Egyptians. The actual origin of these devices is not known, but along with sundials these were the first tools used to measure time.
The water clock functioned by creating a set flow of water that could be used to measure the passage of time. It required constant maintenance though, otherwise the water would run out. Many ancient civilizations were very focused on keeping accurate measurements of time because they used it to track their astronomical findings.
Water clocks were used consistently until the middle ages. The use of incense, candles and hourglasses were also prevalent. While mechanical clocks did make an appearance as early as the 11th century, it wasn't until new methods like the pendulum clock were made by individuals like Galileo Galilei and Christiaan Huygens that they became reliable.
Today the most accurate tool for measuring time are atomic clocks. These incredible devices can maintain a . They are so accurate in fact, that they are used to set other clocks and GPS systems. Instead of using mechanical or repetitive methods, these clocks measure atoms as incredibly low temperatures.
is used to define the standard time for all of the United States. It is located in the National Institute of Standards and Technology. This clock's accuracy means that it won't be off by a single second for at least 100 million years. :
"The second is the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom."
By measuring these caesium atoms at incredibly low temperatures, atomic clocks can track time almost perfectly based on this established standard.
International Time Measurements
Our modern society requires us to have a set standard for how we measure time. The most basic means of doing this is known as International Atomic Time (TAI) and measures seconds, minutes, and hours by coordinating atomic clocks around the world.
Since 1972 we've utilized Coordinated Universal Time or UTC. It follows the TAI standard with slight changes known as leap seconds to ensure that it remains synchronized with the Earth's rotation. This standard replaced the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) but the two terms are still used interchangeably.
The reason for the replacement was because the GMT method used telescopes and solar time to set the standard instead of the more accurate method of atomic clocks. Despite the time standard changing, the location of Greenwich is still used a basis for measuring coordinates.
While the measurement of time is standardized around the world, there is also a means of defining the exact time of day in various regions known as time zones. This is another internationally observed standard that offsets the UTC time depending on the location.
These zones were implemented for legal, commercial, and social reasons and are usually placed along the boundaries of countries or states in the U.S. For the most part these zones offset the time by a whole number of hours but in some cases the change is only thirty or forty-five minutes.
The concept of these time zones was first suggested 1858 in a book written by Quirico Filopanti called Miranda! This concept was not used but it did lay the groundwork for others to follow. The invention of them is attributed to Sir Sanford Fleming but even his concept was modified heavily into what we use today.
The adoption of time zones was slow and gradual. The last country to implement the use of today's standard was Nepal in 1986. All of today's modern countries use time zones in some way, shape, or form. The idea is the same, as is the standard measurement of time, but the implementation of them varies.
For example, China and India both utilize a single time zone despite the fact that their countries are wider than the fifteen degrees of longitude that usually dictates a time zone.
A Tool for the Ages
With technology and research we've continued to grow and expand our knowledge of time, but we still have many questions unanswered. What we do have are very specific methods of measuring it around the world though and The Time Now is here to provide you with all of that information and more.
Our tools are always up-to-date and our database of information is constantly expanding and growing. We are the penultimate resource now and into the future.
Time zone latest news
September 30, 2014
leaders have moved the end of Daylight Saving Time this year back to October, to be closer to Israel's and Europe's changeover date.
May 15, 2014
The government in
has decided to start using Daylight Saving Time again this summer. The last time Egypt used DST was in 2010. As with many other Muslim majority nations who adjust their clocks for the summer, they will be returning to standard time for Ramadan then returning to Daylight Saving Time again for the rest of the summer. The start of DST for Egypt is planned to be midnight on May 15th.
February 7, 2014
While in the past few years, the government of
has extended Daylight Saving Time to the last weekend of April, their time zone law actually states the change will happen the second weekend of March.
January 10, 2014
The government in
has announced an update to the end of Daylight Saving Time this year, which will now end at 2:00 AM on Sunday, January 19 instead of 3:00 AM.
October 25, 2013
The government in
passed a resolution on Thursday canceling the scheduled move back to Winter time on Friday. This puts Libya back on a standard time of +0200 all year, matching their original offset before using Daylight Saving Time this past year.
October 2, 2013
The Brazilian State of Tocantins () has been excluded from observing Daylight Saving Time this and future years. They join a list of a few other States in Brazil who are also excluded and remain on their standard time all year.
September 6, 2013
The government of
has announced a change to the start of Daylight Saving Time this year, delaying it until the 4th Sunday in October instead of the 3rd Sunday used last year. DST is still expected to end on the 3rd Sunday of January.
July 2, 2013
The government in
has finally announced their official dates for suspending Daylight Saving Time this summer. Morocco is returning to standard time on July 7, then back to summer time again on August 10.
follows the same date rules as Morocco does. Similar adjustments are expected to be necessary during upcoming years.
April 15, 2013
The ruling councils in Palestine ( and ) have agreed to end DST and start Winter time on the Friday after or equal to September 21st of each year.
March 11, 2013
changed their clocks this past weekend rather than changing in April as they did last year. At the moment, it looks as if they still plan to end Daylight Saving Time on the first Sunday of November as they did in 2012.
March 7, 2013
The government of
has announced an early end to Daylight Saving Time this year. They will return to standard time on March 24 rather than the second Sunday in April.
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& Copyright The Time NowKermit 95 was developed not only to meet Columbia's need for
connectivity from Windows&95 (and later) to the central text-based
services, but also to raise money to support the Kermit Project.
other Kermit programs, K95 was strictly commercial, available in both a
retail shrinkwrapped version (right) and in .
From its release in 1995 until mid-2011, over a
quarter million bulk license seats were purchased in over 1000 licenses
licenses ranging in size from 100 seats to 10,000.
About 30,000
shrinkwrapped copies were sold, many thousands more purchased for download
from , and K95 was
been site-licensed by over 100 universities as well as by entire statewide
university systems such as SUNY (64 campuses with about 400,000 students).
The Kermit Project was put on a self-funding basis in 1984, and from
then until its cancellation in 2011, it realized $8,894,912.00 in
revenue for the University, plus an equipment grant (the Hermit
Project) valued at $3,000,000.00.
KERMIT PROTOCOL
Since its inception in 1981, the Kermit protocol has developed into a
sophisticated and powerful transport-independent tool for file transfer and
management, incorporating, among other things:
File group transmission
(size, date, permissions, etc)
File name, record-format, and
conversion
File collision options, including an "update" feature
(resumption of an interrupted transfer from the point of failure)
Client/Server file transfer and management
during file-group transmission
even between unlike platforms
Uniform services on serial and network connections
Kermit protocol uses well-defined, sequenced, error-checked packets in each
direction to effect a file-transfer session, following standard rules of
protocol layering.
Packets are designed for maximum transparency, so they
can pass though any communication medium, no matter how restrictive.
Half-duplex (stop and wait), full-duplex (sliding windows with selective
retransmission), and continuous streaming transport can be used to adapt to
any connection.
The feature that distinguishes Kermit protocol from most others is its wide
range of settings to allow adaptation to any kind and quality of connection
between any two kinds of computer & packet length, packet encoding,
window size, character set, error-detection method, timeouts, pauses.
other protocols are designed to work only on certain kinds or qualities of
connections, and/or between certain kinds of computers or like file systems,
and therefore work poorly (or not at all) elsewhere and offer few if any
methods to adapt to unplanned-for situations.
Kermit, on the other hand,
allows you to achieve successful file transfer and the highest possible
performance on any given connection.
Unlike FTP or X-, Y-, and ZMODEM (the other protocols with which Kermit is most
often compared) Kermit protocol does not assume or require:
a connection that is transparent t
big buffers all along th
physical-link-layer flow control.
(although Kermit does not require any of these conditions, it can take
advantage of them when they are available).
A feature article on Kermit protocol by Tim Kientzle in the February 1996
noted that
&Kermit's windowing approach is faster than protocols such as XModem
and YModem . . . What many people don't realize is that under
less-than-ideal conditions, Kermit's windowing approach is significantly
faster than ZModem, a protocol with a well-deserved reputation for fast
transfers over good-quality lines.& The efficiency of the Kermit
protocol is analyzed in depth
Thus Kermit transfers work "out of the box" almost every time.
higher level, the Kermit command language allows all sorts of handy file
selection criteria to be used in any combination, for example:
Wildcards and patterns to match filenames
Selection by date ranges
Selection by size ranges
Only text files
Only binary files
Only files that don't exist on the other end or that are newer
Exception lists and patterns
to accomplish almost any grouping you can imagine. In transit, a file can
have its character-set converted, it can be passed through a filter, etc, and
upon successful transfer, the source file can be deleted or renamed, the
destination file can be renamed or mailed, and so on.
The Kermit file transfer protocol specification is given in the book,
by Frank da&Cruz, with a foreword by
of the Kermit protocol
was published by James Huggins of the University of Michigan in 1995.
KERMIT FILE TRANSFER EXAMPLE
Let's look the common case where you have a Windows desktop computer with a
connection & any kind of connection (modem, serial port, regular
Telnet, secure Telnet, rlogin, secure rlogin, SSH) & to a shell
session on a Unix server ("Unix" = Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, Solaris, AIX,
HP-UX, ) and you want to transfer a file between
your PC and the Unix server.
Your terminal emulator on Windows is Kermit&95 and the Unix server has C-Kermit or
installed, which can be invoked simply by typing &kermit& at the
shell prompt (or perhaps &ckermit& or &gkermit&).
To download a file, say, message.txt, you type the following
command at the shell prompt:
kermit -s message.txt
The file is sent to Kermit 95's current directory on your PC (or to its
DOWNLOAD DIRECTORY if you have defined one).
It doesn't
matter if the fi Kermit figures it out and transfers it
automatically in the appropriate mode.
Similarly if you want to transfer a group of files, say, all the files
whose names start with &daily.&:
kermit -s daily.*
Kermit sends each file that matches, switching automatically
between text and binary mode as appropriate for each file (daily.jpg,
daily.xls, daily.txt, ...)
Uploading a file from your PC to Unix is just as easy.
Suppose you
have a file called &budget.xls& in Kermit&95's
current directory on your PC.
To upload it to UNIX, type this at the Unix
shell prompt:
kermit -g budget.xls
T there are many variat for example:
Only transfer files that are newer than the counterparts on the other end.
Convert character sets of text files appropriately (e.g. between ISO
8859-1 and Unicode UTF-8).
Recover a partial transfer from the point of failure (binary mode only).
To save yourself some typing, you can define aliases on Unix (in your
shell profile):
alias s="kermit -Ys"
alias g="kermit -Yg"
(s for Send, g for Get).
s message.txt
g budget.xls
It's worth noting that you are transferring your files over the same
connect thus there is no need make a new connection,
re-authenticate yourself, or similar bureaucracy.
If the connection is
secured by SSH, Kerberos, SSL, TLS, or SRP, then the file transfer is also
This marks an unparalleled degree of convenience.
When you tell C-Kermit on
Unix to send or get a file, its first file-transfer packet is recognized
automatically by Kermit&95's terminal emulator and K95 pops into either
receive mode or server mode, depending on the direction, and when the
transfer is finished, K95 returns to its terminal emulation screen.
there is an error (for example, if you do not have write permission in the
destination directory) K95 remains in its file-transfer screen so you can
see what the problem was.
Unfortunately, most information about Kermit software and protocol that is
found on external websites is inaccurate or severely dated.
relatively favorable Wikipedia
article focuses on details and long-forgotten trivia from 30 years ago
and mostly ignores the steady progress that has been made since then.
What Is Kermit? / Frank da Cruz /
Most recent update: 16 August 2011}