Unix Timestamp Conversion Tools
Convert unix timestamp to date and vice versa
Supports Unix timestamps in seconds, milliseconds, microseconds and nanoseconds.
The unix time stamp is a way to track time as a running total of seconds. This count starts at the Unix Epoch on January 1st, 1970 at UTC. Therefore, the unix time stamp is merely the number of seconds between a particular date and the Unix Epoch. It should also be pointed out (thanks to the comments from visitors to this site) that this point in time technically does not change no matter where you are located on the globe. This is very useful to computer systems for tracking and sorting dated information in dynamic and distributed applications both online and client side.
On this date the Unix Time Stamp will cease to work due to a 32-bit overflow. Before this moment millions of applications will need to either adopt a new convention for time stamps or be migrated to 64-bit systems which will buy the time stamp a "bit" more time.
UT1 is the most precise form of universal time. It's computed using observations of quasars in outer space (which make up the International Celestial Reference Frame) and of distances between Earth and its satellites - natural (Moon) and artificial. UTC only tries to approximate UT1: it is kept within 0.9 seconds of UT1 by employing leap seconds.
Intuition tells us timezones should probably span from UTC+0 to UTC-12 to the west of the Greenwhich Meridian and from UTC+0 to UTC+12 to the east. In fact they can reach UTC+14. UTC+14 is Christmas Island's (Kiribati) time all year round and Samoa's daylight saving time during southern hemisphere summer. Therefore the maximum difference between 2 local times on Earth is 26 hours.
- A 32-bit overflow will cause the Unix Time Stamp to cease working on January 19th, 2038. Before this moment, millions of applications will need to either adopt a new convention for time stamps or migrate to 64-bit systems, which will buy the time stamp some extra time.
- Any timestamp before 1970 is represented by a negative number, which represents the number of seconds until January 1st, 1970 00:00:00 UTC.
- In Unix time, leap seconds have the same Unix time as the second before it, because each day consists of exactly 86,400 seconds. Therefore, Unix time does not accurately represent UTC.