Half the world is in darkness and the other half in sunlight all the time. Why does the clock have to be at 12:00 everywhere when the sun's at its highest point? The world would adjust going to Universal World Time and dropping the summer/winter change. For most of the world the day would begin around the time the sun rises and concludes when it sets. The only difference would be where the hands are on the clock.

I like my days and nights the way they are, thank you.
I like the sun at its highest at 12:00, mid-day. If the OP's suggestion came into effect, 12:00 would be the middle of the night where I live.

I doubt that you'd get the whole world to change, just to suit some people who can't be bothered to calculate time differences.

I live in New Zealand and have a a daughter living in the UK and a son living in India. We all mange to talk to each other, in spite of the time differences.

With a single time zone, people in some places will have to get used to "the next day" starting sometime in the day time rather than sometime in the night time.

Those who frequently travel or do business across time zones have to deal with that now, but such a change will affect many others who do not frequently travel or do business across time zones.

Besides being just a terrible idea, practically speaking, the number of people for whom this would be more convenient is a tiny tiny tiny fraction the world's population, for whom it would be a nightmare.

I wouldn't worry about it ever happening. If the world can't agree on commonly-used electrical plugs there is no chance a single global time zone is never going to happen.

It's always 5 o'clock somewhere. :D

What about the possibility of condensing 24 time zones into 3 time zones: one for the third of Earth's longitudinal surface area corresponding to the America's, one for Africa/Europe, and one for Asia/Australia. Crossing into a new timezone would mean jumping 8 hours, but would be easier to manage for international scheduling.

Three is a little too few and is odd as well, but four of 6 hours can be OK.

Two models of it:

1. Americas (and mainland USA only)
2. Greenland + Europe + MEast + Africa + SEZ + MRU + RUN
3. Asia + Australia
4. New Zealand + Pacific (incl Alaska + Hawaii)

Dateline between 4 and 1 , except AK and HI should be east of dateline so it is same day and 'only' 6 hours behind contiguous US.

1. Americas + Alaska + Hawaii + Greenland and Eastern Pacific islands east of 160 W
2. Europe + Middle East + Africa + SEZ + MRU + RUN
3. Asia except Japan and Korea
4. Korea + Japan + Australia + New Zealand + Pacific west of 160 W

Dateline between 4 and 1.
That means Japan is 6 hours ahead of the rest of Asia.

But when we even get 24 full hour timezons without DST it would be welcome.

So, confuse the entire population to benefit a few in aviation? Not going to fly (pun intended).

Get rid of DST, that I agree with. It's just plain stupid.

A whole lot of people get up with the sun. Including me. Telling me I'm going to wake up at 1600? Make my time zone with the sun and let the Euros wake up at 2400.

Delete

This is the number one reason why we can never go to a single world time zone. Close the thread. :D

Ask again once the whole world is using the metric system.

Why has nobody mention the Swatch Internet Time yet? It exists since 1998 but has failed to gain attention.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time

And I think only one time zone would be a great idea! I don't care to eat breakfast at 22:00 UTC if the sun just starts rising.

I can already see the following question being asked a lot: "When does the sun rise and set around here?"

The advantage of time zones is that you can have unified time tables. Business hours in Asia are roughly similar than the ones in Europe, Africa or the Americas.

With electronic devises adapting automatically to the respective time zone, I don't see why we would adhere to such an inconvenience. Don't try the reinvent the wheel.

Haven't read the whole thread, but I'd say eliminating time zones causes an issue when needing to know what time of day it is in another place. For example, if I were in London at 13:00 then with time zones I might ask "What time is it in Singapore?" and be told it is 21:00. We're naturally tuned in to understand what happens at different times of day so the time difference/zone is inherently useful.

If we had no time zones and I asked the same question then the answer would be 13:00, but it doesn't help me know whether someone might be asleep, at work, or able to take my call so we would still need to know the time offset.

Can we have the entire world on one timezone? Only if we want the incredible cultural shift of redefining some basic concepts such as "morning," "evening," and "night" for a large chunk of the world's population. How would anyone here like to be in the part of the world where, because of sun position, it's considered normal to get up at 10 pm? (I've traveled in China. It's bad enough there, especially in the western part of the country, but at least morning is still morning and so on.)