Absence of Global Time¶

There is no single source of truth for "now" across distributed nodes - clocks drift, networks delay messages unpredictably, and simultaneity is physically meaningless at network distances, forcing use of logical time or careful synchronization protocols.

Tension Addressed¶

Consistency vs. Latency

Recognizable As¶

NTP synchronization with known bounds; timestamp conflicts in distributed databases; "last-write-wins" policies; clock skew handling; GPS-synchronized time

Canonical Sources¶

Lamport, "Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System" (1978); Corbett et al., "Spanner: Google's Globally Distributed Database" (2012)

Transfers To¶

Distributed databases, event ordering, conflict resolution, audit logs, any time-dependent coordination

Physical time cannot establish causality across network boundaries. Even with perfect clocks, network delays make "before" and "after" ambiguous. This drives the need for logical clocks and careful timestamp handling.