It's 12:58 ... or is it?

By Suzanne Wentley
Posted at 08:57 AM on June 06, 2006

When I filed my story yesterday, I just presumed that the clock on this computer was wrong. It was four hours faster than my watch. Odd, right?

But then this morning, when I was learning about the echosounder -- a device that measures ocean depth using acoustics -- I noticed, again, that clock was four hours fast. What gives!?

Turns out the entire ship runs on Greenwich Mean Time, or Universal Time Coordinated for you Anglo-phobes out there. GMT is a universal time system, which isn't affected by daylight savings or different local time. By recording data in that manner, they're able to ensure accuracy when comparing information from different research cruises in different parts of the world!

And here I thought I had missed lunch...

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