Well, the title might be rhetorical, but physics nerds really need to take notes this time. Where? On paper. LOL, sorry for the anticlimax, but that’s where we are travelling through time today—on paper! How? Ask Kiribati — the pro at flirting with the rhetoric of time. How our Earth can exist across three different days at the same time is effortlessly demonstrated by this island country in Oceania.
This calendar-level plot twist came about in 1994 when Kiribati, entirely of its own accord, decided to move the International Date Line (IDL) to include its easternmost islands on the western side of IDL. Far from being a mere flex, the decision sprang out of inconvenience and necessity. Imagine waking up on a Monday and realizing that half of your country is still observing Sunday! A logistical nightmare, really, as the Republic of Kiribati’s western islands were aligned with trade partners like New Zealand and Australia, while eastern ones lagged behind in time with the US. So, recognizing the arbitrariness of the IDL, they thought, ‘Okay, enough of this timey-wimey nonsense,’ and simply moved the International Date Line. Just like that—poof! No more scheduling chaos. They ironed out a major logistical hurdle, simplifying local timekeeping and aligning the entire nation’s timekeeping. But this shift was like no other. Why, you ask? Because this move added two extra hours to the global time-keeping system, pushing the maximum time difference between two places on Earth to an unprecedented 26 hours! It also made Kiribati the first place to officially enter the new millennium in 2000, on Caroline Atoll, along with being the first place on the planet to witness the sunrise each day since the dawn of ‘95. Kiribati didn’t just adjust time—it casually redefined how far apart now could be: three days (for two earthly hours, i.e., UTC 10:00–12:00).
“For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
Albert Einstein, in a letter he wrote in 1955
Redefining Deadlines – EOD,but AoE!
Time (basically, timekeeping) on Earth is a construct and not so sacrosanct; so, why not opt for the most convenient version? Well, being 26 hours early is all a flex, but only when it’s New Year’s Eve. Otherwise, it’s just bending time to leave the rest of the world behind. Comes to the rescue — Baker Island, a remote atoll in the Pacific with the maximum difference of time between two places on Earth, sharing maritime boundaries with the fast-running—the Republic of Kiribati.
The sole entity responsible for adding the flair of AoE (Anywhere on Earth) to EOD (End of Day), Baker Island grants the maximum possible time to anyone on Earth—the ultimate global deadline—without the hassle of time zone conversions or the ever-confusing shifts of Daylight Saving Time, as it’s the last place on Earth to experience any day, date, or time. With an AoE time zone, it’s tweaking things just enough to meet the needs of procrastinators — showing how being late isn’t a flaw, but rather just bad geography. 😛
Well, think Kiribati and Baker Island are the only such pairs, both lying around in the Pacific with pretty wild temporal aspects, despite being cartographically close and geographically near? Absolutely not!
There are lands (yes, isles again!) so near that one can be seen from the other—just 3.8 km (2.4 miles) away from each other! But the catch? Read on.
Meet Yesterday and Tomorrow Islands!
Yeah, quite really. Little Diomede and Big Diomede got these sobriquets because the latter is 21 hours ahead of the former, making them almost a day apart from each other! But always? Nay—20 hours in summer. All hail DST (Daylight Saving Time), observed by Little Diomede in the US. These two places are the world’s closest landmasses to have a time difference as big as this. Today and tomorrow, in a line of sight, literally!
What intrigues me even more isn’t just the time differences—as they’re all arbitrary and in line with lines drawn by humans to delineate territories via treaties that merely regulate delimitations—but the dynamics of the place itself! Because it’s shaped by the environment, nature, flora and fauna, terrain, the Indigenous people, their culture, customs, practices, and the place itself. Most of these locations with weird time placements are the places located at the most unusual, secluded, lonesome places. Big Diomede, despite its name and size, has no population at all. Just military camps and personnel. However, Little Diomede has a population of just double-seven, as of 2023. When Lana Del Rey said, “Change is a powerful thing, people are powerful beings,” the Iñupiat inhabitants of this Alaskan isle seemed to echo, “Whenever it does [change], we’ll be here for it.” And so they have—as some archaeologists believe, for more than 3,000 years now, the Indigenous population has inhabited Diomede, remaining steadfast against time and tide. They have a school, library, church, and a heliport. With scant vegetation, absence of any road network, no restaurants or hotels, and with just one store having limited supplies of the daily commodities — calling the circumstances challenging is an understatement.
But beware, time travellers! It’s not all sunshine and rainbows for you. Challenges for them, and challenges for you! Like most lines drawn to demarcate and separate lands, even though the distance between today and tomorrow is 3.6 km apparently, you cannot just waltz across. And no, it’s not because of the water in between—come winter, the sea obligingly ices over, forming a natural bridge between the two isles. But don’t lace up your boots just yet! You can’t just stroll across and hop between time zones. Sorry, my fellow adventurers, physics isn’t the only thing standing in your way—geography has its own set of rules too. Bridges may freeze, but bureaucracy never melts. “Time travel” is strictly off-limits here because… well, it’s the governm—.
Anyway, what else is forbidden? Going to Baker Island. Access requires a special-use permit, primarily granted to scientists, researchers, and educators—if the authorities deem their purposes fit. This atoll, devoid of ports, harbours, currency, and inhabitants, is accessible only via seaways.
As aforementioned, unlike Little Diomede, Big Diomede has had no permanent native population since 1948, when the Soviet government forced the indigenous population of the Tomorrow Island off the isle and relocated them to mainland Russia, in order to prevent cross-border contact. It now comprises only of military bases. Some places and territories are designated as refuges, like Baker Island, while others, unfortunately, turn their inhabitants into refugees. Some inhabitants are deported and relocated by the governments, like in Big Diomede, while others are left with no choice but to seek refuge. Yes! Meet the fates of more than hundreds of thousands of people of Kiribati — the islanders who are victims of the climate change happening. The first to see the sunrise each day, may be the first country to lose all its land territory to climate change. “According to the worst-case scenarios, Kiribati will be submerged within (this) century,” said the then-president of Kiribati, Anote Tong. Kiribati officials asked Australia and New Zealand to accept the citizens of Kiribati as permanent refugees. In June 2008, Tong said climate change “is not an issue of economic development; it’s an issue of human survival.”
The quirks and quiddities of such places fill me with awe and wonder, especially when considering how life and time unfold in places like Kiribati, Baker Island, the Diomede Isles, and the like, which are almost invariably isolated specks adrift in time. But one thing is for sure: time is nuanced; time on paper can easily be tweaked—and that in the words of A. Einstein, in a letter he would address to the bereaved family of his deceased Italian pal, Michele Besso, in 1955: “Now he has departed this strange world a little ahead of me. That signifies nothing. For us believing physicists, the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
Time travel—possible or not? Well, that’s a question for another day (time? LOL). But until then, we can travel 2.4 miles to get to the past (or future), at least on paper, sigh! Or maybe head to the Line Islands to ring in the new year first, and bounce back to the Baker (both isle and person 😜) to celebrate your birthday twice? Or dodge a deadline, perhaps?
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