What is Coordinated Universal Time?
{{Time zones of Europe}} '''Coordinated Universal Time''' (or '''UTC''') is the standard time system of the [[world]]. It is the standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. It is, within about 1 second, mean solar time at 0° longitude. The standard before was Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). UTC and GMT are almost the same. In fact, there is no practical difference which would be noticed by ordinary people.<ref>Guinot, Bernard 2011. Solar time, legal time, time in use. ''Metrologica'' '''48''' (4): S181–185. [http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0026-1394/48/4/S08/meta;jsessionid=EFE4FABEA4925A8AF5687B5CFDC8BFF3.c1.iopscience.cld.iop.org]{{Dead link|date=September 2021|bot=InternetArchiveBot|fix-attempted=yes}}</ref> Some websites, for example [[Wikipedia]], use UTC because it does not make any country look more important than the others. It offers one time for all the [[Internet]] (the same time can be used by people all over the world). Time zones are often named by how many hours they are different from UTC time. For example, UTC−5 (United States east coast) is 5 hours behind UTC. If the time is 07:00 UTC, the local time is 02:00 in New York (UTC−5) and 10:00 in Moscow (UTC+3). 07:00 UTC is also written more simply as 0700Z (or 07:00Z). Note that UTC uses the 24-hour clock. That means there is no 'AM' or 'PM'. For example, 4:00PM would be 16:00 or 1600. UTC also does not use [[Daylight Saving Time|daylight saving time]] - that way the time stays [[wikt:en:consistent|consistent]] the entire year. When this page loaded, it was '''{{CURRENTDAYNAME}}, {{CURRENTYEAR}} {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}}, {{CURRENTTIME}} in UTC'''. {| align=center |[[File:World Time Zones Map.png|thumb|800px|center|Standard Time Zones Map, as of August 21st 1988]] |} == References == {{reflist}} [[Category:Time zones]]