We all know that, psychologically, time shortens like the blink of an eye or stretches like bubble gum depending on whether we are having a good or bad time, respectively.
But there is another way to violate the natural passing of time in an official way: this is what a certain Julian O´Shea did on February 14, 2019, who took advantage of the time zones that are grouped together with the international exchange line of date.
Time zones
The international date change line is an imaginary land surface line drawn over the Pacific Ocean and close to the 180 ° meridian. For the convenience of some countries whose territory it crosses, the legal or local time and date, in them, may be the one corresponding to the other hemisphere. Moving from one side of the line to the other implies changing the date, exactly one day.
International date change line (in black).As a result, Julian lived through a single 49-hour calendar day thanks to time changes .
To achieve this, he began his journey in Apia, Samoa, and from there he traveled to Auckland (New Zealand), Sydney (Australia) and Honolulu (Hawaii), to finish in Pago Pago (American Samoa).
As a result, Julian equaled the record of Mariusz Majewski from Poland, who on March 13, 2017 also completed a 24-hour day in 49 hours.
When crossing the international date change line from east to west (from America to Asia via the Pacific Ocean) the date must be advanced one day on all clocks, that is, one day is lost. On the other hand, if a traveler crosses said line from west to east, the date must be delayed one day (winning one day). Jules Verne was based on this idea to write his famous novel Around the World in Eighty Days .
Due to the number of territories it governs beyond Europe, by the way, France is the country with the most time zones : 12 (13 during one time of the year).
Of course, all of this is still a convention . However, it is still very different from the conventions and models on which science in general depends: the world is so complex that we need to simplify it in order to manage some of its areas. The models allow us to orient ourselves, make predictions, know how something works at a certain level, as you can see in the following video: