Researchers at the U.K.'s University of East Anglia now are working on a scale they call the "dwell time index" to calculate how much time a planet has orbited in a habitable zone, compared with the time it took life to evolve on Earth.
"Countries could just accommodate the divergence by not putting their clocks forward in the spring, so you'd change your timezone by one hour to bring civil time back into line with the Earth's rotation, " added Dr Whibberley.