Always running late? Head to Sicily.
In Catania and other cities on the southern Italian island, life-according to
digital clocks-runs 15 to 20 minutes ahead of standard time.
This
as-yet-unexplained phenomenon has sparked the curiosity of two computer experts
of St. Microelectronics, a semiconductor corporation based in Catania. Andrea
De Luca and Francesco Nicosia are leading the efforts to discover why hundreds
of digital clocks seem to be set ahead.
When Nicosia
posed this question on his Facebook page, ‘How many of you have had problems
with alarm clocks, microwave clocks, etc?’ he immediately received a deluge of
comments from followers: ‘I know I re-set the time on my microwave, but it
keeps changing back.’ ‘It’s true even my microwave is ahead by about 7 min …
how strange.’
Some have
attributed the problem to the presence of Mount Etna, Sicily’s active volcano,
and its electromagnetic fields that may be the answer to sudden changes in the
delivery of electric currents.
