7.6. Time in distributed systems
7.6.1. Physical earth time
We should first note that earth time is established only by convention. There is no universal time. Einstein proved that the velocity of light is constant for all observers irrespective of their velocity, see Figure 7.2.
Figure 7.2. Time beyond the earth.
Let us assume that our distributed system is earth based so that we can assume some notion of conventional physical time. Standard earth time is based on the earth's rotation in terms of days and years but accurate values are now derived from an atomically defined caesium clock. This time is (mis)named Universal Coordinated Time (UTC ...
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