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The space-time continuum can produce some interesting results Photo: GETTY
Ever wanted to travel back in time? A friend of mine did it the other day. Walking into a diner in Tuba, Arizona, just after 2pm, he was told that they had stopped serving lunch. Seeing his crestfallen reaction, the waiter suggested he try the pub across the street: “It’s an hour earlier there,” he said.
And it was.
Tuba is in the Navajo Nation homeland in Arizona, and while Arizona does not observe Daylight Saving Time, the Navajo reservation does. So for half the year, some institutions in the town are an hour ahead of the others.
My friend’s sense of time and space was also challenged by his experience at the Four Corners Monument in the Navajo Tribal Park. This is the only point in the United States where the borders of so many states — Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado — meet at one point.
So, by dropping on to his hands and knees, he could be in four places at once. Pure frippery, of course. But it made me think of other places in the world where the space-time continuum produces some interesting results.
International Dateline
There is nothing to see when you cross this imaginary line slicing the Pacific Ocean, but it offers the most spectacular opportunity for time travel. Phileas Fogg only realised the potential benefits when he got back to Pall Mall, but if you plan carefully you can make it work to your advantage.
Don’t like Christmas? Leave London on December 24 on Air New Zealand’s NZ1 at 3.45pm, travel west via Los Angeles, and you arrive in Auckland at 7.25am on the morning of the 26th, having missed out the 25th altogether.
Want two birthdays? Have one in New Zealand, and another the “next” day in Samoa: the 10.30pm flight NZ0860 from Auckland to Apia arrives at 2.25am on the same date (www.airnewzealand.co.uk).
Greenwich Meridian
There is no geographical logic to this divide between East and West; just a geopolitical one. The prime meridian was drawn here after an international conference in 1884, so that all longitude could be calculated with reference to the same point, and that all countries would adopt a universal day. In practice, when it was noon at Greenwich, the whole world would be on the same day.
It still is, and although you can’t go back or forward in time, a visit to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich (www.nmm.ac.uk) does allow you to stand with one foot in the East and one in the West. It is also one of the best places to get to grips with the history of timekeeping, stargazing and navigation. Among the many clocks and telescopes is perhaps the most important timekeeper ever constructed: John Harrison’s H4 of 1761. It was the first clock that kept time accurately enough at sea for navigators to calculate their exact longitude and therefore their exact position.
The Meridian cuts a long slice through England and is marked at various places. It is no longer inscribed at its most northerly landfall: the cliffs by Sand Le Mere caravan park near Hull (www.sand-le-mere.co.uk); the marker was lost when the cliffs collapsed. But at Peacehaven, in East Sussex, it is embellished with a large monument to King George V.
The French resisted until 1914 the notion that Time and Space should begin and end in London. They had had their own line, which is still marked in l’Observatoire de Paris (www.obspm.fr), since the 1660s. Greenwich Mean Time was replaced as the standard time for the world in 1967 by the more accurate Universal Co-ordinated Time (UTC), which is regulated by the radiation emitted from a caesium-133 atom. It is still based on the time in Greenwich, but UTC is administered in Paris.
Crossing the Equator – on land
The Equator does at least exist physically. The best definition I can find is that it marks “the intersection of the Earth’s surface with the plane perpendicular to the Earth’s axis of rotation and containing the Earth’s centre of mass”. Since it runs for thousands of miles over land, passing through 10 countries, you can visit it at many points. By doing so, you can bestride the two hemispheres. But the most significant consequence of your location in time and space, the sun’s station directly overhead at noon, occurs only twice a year, at the equinox.
A perhaps more exciting phenomenon, believed in by many (including me until recently), is the opportunity to observe the effect of the “Coriolis force”: the drag supposedly caused by the rotation of the earth that determines which way the water spirals down a plug hole. Theoretically, it should spin in the opposite direction in the northern hemisphere from the one it takes in the southern. By the same logic, if your sink were situated on the Equator it would run straight out with no swirl.
There are plenty of equatorial locals who are happy to demonstrate this phenomenon to passing tourists for a small fee. I have heard of a man with a funnel on the line in Uganda, and a sink near Quito. However, the scientific consensus seems to be that it is the shape and size of the plug hole that effects the water flow, not the hemisphere.
Crossing the Equator – at sea
You might want to be a little wary of admitting to being an initiate when it comes to crossing the Equator at sea. “Crossing the Line” initiation ceremonies used to be so violent — including duckings and physical assaults — that some navy recruits drowned. Most modern cruises mark the event with more restraint. P&O Cruises use the traditional terms for initiates and old hands in a press release: “During the fun poolside ceremony, a member of the crew dresses as King Neptune with the job of turning newcomers to the Equator from 'slimy polliwogs’ into 'trusty shellbacks’ with proven sea legs.”
Continental divide
I have two nominations for the most interesting geographical divides, and both mark a clash of cultures.
The two-hour hydrofoil across the Strait of Gibraltar takes you from a Christian British colonial enclave, which is physically but not politically part of the Spanish mainland, to Tangiers, a Muslim African city, once French but populated mainly by Arabs.
Crossing the Bosporus in Istanbul, on the other hand, you pass from Europe into Asia without leaving Turkey. You are in the heart of a city that has been the centre of the Roman, Christian and Ottoman worlds, where temples became churches and churches became mosques.
Rather less exciting, but somehow strangely moving, is the stone that marks the land divide between Europe and Asia by the side of the Trans-Siberian railway. It was pointed out to me once by the carriage attendant as we trundled slowly past. But without the marker, I wouldn’t have known it was such a critical point — the vista of snowbound birch trees didn’t change until we got to the great plains of Mongolia.
Arctic Circle
I have crossed the Arctic Circle in Lapland in winter, but the midday moon doesn’t have quite the same impact as the midnight sun, which I haven’t yet experienced.
The nearest I got was in Iceland, which unfortunately doesn’t quite clip the circle, located at 66 degrees, 30 minutes North Latitude. Folklore suggested that by going to the northernmost point of the mainland, I would be able to hurl a stone into the Arctic Circle. True — but only if your arm is strong enough to pitch a stone nearly two miles.
To view the midnight sun on land in the southern hemisphere you will have to travel to the Antarctic continent, which is almost entirely bound by the antarctic circle. You might want to continue to the south pole and find out if your compass really does point north in every direction.
- I’m sure there are other places where readers have experienced warps in the space-time continuum; please do add your comments below.
