Theoretical Conundrum Time!

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Famine

Famine

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Rule 12
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GTP_Famine
Okay...

You're at the North Pole. Or South Pole. Either's good.

You run around it clockwise (or anti-clockwise, if you've gone all Antarctic - you're running with the direction of ascending time zones). It's taken you 5 seconds to do that run, but in the course of it, you've crossed the International Date Line and lost 24hrs - it's now the previous day.

Go the other way - in the direction of descending time zones - and you gain 24hr each rotation. It's suddenly the next day.


If you ran around the Pole the right way, could you skip ahead a fortnight, see the football results, go back and run around it the other way and go place bets on them?
 
No. The International date line is man made, it is not a physical barrier, so crossing over it 5 times does not change the real date. All you've done is to run around expending energy in one of the most hostile environments on Earth, so you'll probably end up dead, eaten by a polar bear, or a particularly irate penguin.
 
You could say you are a day older, but noone would listen to you as you haven't actually had a 24hour day.

Anyway, who runs when they are in artic gear and pulling a sledge? :dopey:
 
#1. Polar bears are North Pole.
#2. Penguins are south pole.
#3. Penguins smell really bad.
#4. If a baby is screaming and noone is around to hear it, is it really screaming?
 
Try this instead then - use a Blackbird. Fly due East as fast as you can manage, going up through the timezones. Blackbird could, with enough fuel (or indeed refuelling in-flight), circle the globe in just over 10 hours- but you lose 24 hours as you cross the IDL and land 14 hours BEFORE you took off.
 
daan
No. The International date line is man made, it is not a physical barrier, so crossing over it 5 times does not change the real date. All you've done is to run around expending energy in one of the most hostile environments on Earth, so you'll probably end up dead, eaten by a polar bear, or a particularly irate penguin.
Click to expand...

:lol:

Would that penguin be irate because it had switched poles?
 
911_Carrera
Would that penguin be irate because it had switched poles?
Click to expand...
He was irate because he had been interviewed by McVities and they said they would name a biscuit after him. It pee-ed him off that they hadn't called it "Kevin".
 

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