How Many Time Zones Are There In The World?
Currently there are 24 official time zones in the world. There are 16 others too but they are not usually taken into account in official international matters. Official time zones are divided into units of one hour each but the unofficial time zones may have 15 min, 30 min or 45 min as their base unit. Ideally speaking, there should be 24 time zones in the world but this is not the world of our dreams and there are political factors at work too! For example, China and India don’t have any time zones but if speaking scientifically, China passes through five time zones and India through two, but the ruling politicians who don’t want to divide their country into time zones in order to protect its integrity! The result is: one has to adjust his/her watch by 3.5 hours when one crosses the border from China to Afghanistan.
On the other hand, there are eleven time zones in both France and Russia and the government of Russia is trying to bring the number down. In Iran, the government prefers to divides the time zones into 30 minute units.
