If you are concerned that humanity has changed the Earth's environment you will be alarmed to learn that time has also been seriously affected.  The Earth day is no longer 24 hours, but is now about 25 hours long - solely because of the presence of mankind.

Like environmental changes, most of us are unaware that anything has happened because we do not feel the affects of that change in our day to day lives.  So as unbelievable as it seems, here is conclusive proof:

Before mankind's tampering with time the 'day' was 24 hours (ignoring minor variances).  It could be measured by the rotation of the Earth as evidenced by the passing of the Sun overhead.  The Sun would pass over ANY given spot (along its trajectory) at 24 hour intervals.

Then mankind began creating technologies to measure time.  We began tampering with the measure of time without regard for the consequences.  We drew a line down the face of the planet and arbitrarily divided it into 24 time zones.

The affects are astounding.  In any given time zone (up to 1,037.56 miles wide) the Sun ONLY passes overhead one spot at precisely 12:00 noon!  Everywhere else the Sun passes overhead at times earlier or later than noon - yet we have completely ignored this blatant evidence.

The longer term consequences are that the day is now as much as an hour longer than it was before we started tampering with it.

If we measure time from the start of the first time zone to the start of the last time zone the total is precisely 24 hours... but the final time zone has yet an hour left to measure!  Hence the net result of human time tampering is an extra hour per day.

We never considered how increasing the day by 4.17% may impact on months, seasons and years to come - and worse, we never even speak of it!  Our lack of conscious awareness is profound - so I hope that speaking out will help prevent any further time abuses before we do more irreparable harm.

With tongue in cheek,

Ian