Why quote times in EST on a British website? Couldn't be bothered to convert to BST or better yet GMT for an international audience? Most people know their timezone's offset from GMT.
NASA readies its asteroid warning system for harmless flyby
With asteroid 2012 TC4 about to pass between Earth and the moon, NASA is gearing up for its much-anticipated live test of its warning system. Back in July, the approaching rock caused a brief flurry of speculation that an impact was imminent, before the European Space Agency issued a “calm down” statement. With error bars …
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Thursday 12th October 2017 15:03 GMT Anonymous Coward
@Symon
From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Mean_Time
"Today GMT is considered equivalent to UTC for UK civil purposes (but this is not formalised) and for navigation is considered equivalent to UT1 (the modern form of mean solar time at 0° longitude); these two meanings can differ by up to 0.9 s. Consequently, the term GMT should not be used for precise purposes"
So GMT can be either UTC or UT1 depending on context. They can therefore be up to 0.9s apart. QED.
OK, so 'microsecond' was a poor choice of magnitude, but my point still stands.
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Wednesday 11th October 2017 09:06 GMT JimC
> Why quote times in EST on a British website?
There are sound arguments for quoting the original content rather than converting it. Would have been nice to list the GMT offset though.
For those who haven't clicked through, the closest approach is going to be over antarctica, so presumably no point in Brits looking out.
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Wednesday 11th October 2017 11:36 GMT phuzz
As a Brit obviously it would be easiest to have the time given in BST (currently), but as there's readers all over the world, giving a time in UTC would be the best option because that way each reader only has to make one calculation, based on their current offset from UTC.
When there's a time in some obscure local timezone, most readers have to go find out the offset from (in this case) EDT to UTC, and then convert from UTC into local time.
So please elReg, make your editorial standard, at least for events with global impact*, to report times in UTC.
* hopefully not the best word to use for this particular story.
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Wednesday 11th October 2017 15:10 GMT Anonymous Coward
The culprit is NASA, which didn't reported times in UTC in the original article - reporting also US timezones times for all those Americans weak in basic arithmetic, or who believe the Earth is flat and the whole world has the same time time as theirs.
Even the N is NASA is "National", they are followed around the world, and even they are reporting observation made by non US entities.
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Wednesday 11th October 2017 08:51 GMT imanidiot
Bit late ain't it?
Bit late to fire up the astroid WARNING system if you know it's already there and know exactly where it;s going to be. I'd think the ones we DON'T see and of which we don't know where they are that we should be warned about.
And are we sure it's an asteroid? "Those aren't moons!"
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Wednesday 11th October 2017 09:42 GMT TRT
Re: Bit late ain't it?
My early warning system for detecting elephant stampedes works perfectly. There hasn't been a single death or even injury caused by elephant stampedes in the North Harrow area for the 20 years it has been operational. I'm 100% confident that it works.
And has for my parachute manufacturing company, I've never had a single complaint about faulty products.
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Wednesday 11th October 2017 12:58 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Are you sure?
I'm now in a philosophical quandary.
If I respond to your comment I do the thing you complain about in your comment.
If I don't then maybe you didn't see how the joke followed through from the first one responding to the other commentard.
There's no easy way to get to the bottom of this though it's had a good run.
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Thursday 12th October 2017 21:47 GMT Canna
Fly Past? What a Waste of a Rocket!!!
Why do a fly past of it. If its a test for defence purposes, why not put a few tons of TNT in the rockets cone and blast it out of existence. That would be a real test for defence purposes! Thats of course if everyone involved can tell the correct time. LOL. With a bit of luck the bits might get the satellites that broadcast the Sky TV channels in the UK.