How New Year will dawn in 2023

Colombo (News 1st) - The dawn of a New Year is a complex process worldwide and 2023 is no different. So let’s take a look at how it happens.

The International Date Line, which is an imaginary line running down the Pacific Ocean roughly in the middle of it, is where the New Year dawns first. So the closer your country is to the date line from the west, the earlier the New Year will dawn.

The Line Islands time zone in the Pacific nation of Kiribati will be the first to enter 2023, at 3:30 p.m. Sri Lanka time. The next country will be neighboring Tonga an hour later.

Ironically, neighboring American Samoa will be the last to enter 2023 at 3:30 pm on Sunday Sri Lanka time. Although American Samoa is to the west of Kiribati, countries near the international date line are allowed to choose which side of the imaginary line they want to be on, and the government of American Samoa opted to be on the east of the line!

The most interesting place is probably Antarctica, which runs across all 24 time zones. The people in Antarctica are all manning various scientific stations from about a dozen countries, and each station stays with the time zone of its parent country – the USA, Australia, Russia, etc. But right now it’s summer in Antarctica, and the sun shines 24 hours a day for six months straight, so there’s really no ‘dawn’ at all, although scientists at each station are likely to be popping a bottle of champagne when 2023 dawns in their respective parent nations!