What is 2025 Zulu time?

20:25 Zulu is 8:25 PM in Greenwich, England. Here is how it works:

The earth is divided into 24 time zones because the earth takes 24 hours to make one rotation. Great Britain was the dominant sea power when accurate clocks were developed to calculate east and west distance for marine travel. It used the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, as the prime meridian for identifying east/west travel.

Each meridian line has a letter designation. The Greenwich meridian is Z. To avoid letter confusion when communicating, letters are given names that begin with that particular letter: A = Alpha, B = Baker, C = Charlie, D = Delta, E = Echo, etc., and Z = Zulu. While civilians will refer to the time at the Royal Observatory as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), government agencies often use the alpha codes -- hence the designation, Zulu Time.

Alternately, even though a day is 24 hours long, time is divided into two blocks of 12 hours each. Noon (12:00) is the dividing line and is designated meridian, the point at which the sun is at its zenith. The first half of the day, which begins at 12:01 in the morning (one minute after midnight), is designated ante (before) meridian, or a.m. The second half of the day, which begins one minute after noon, is designated post (after) meridian, or p.m. Noon, as meridian, is neither a.m. nor p.m.

However, the government uses a 24-hour cycle to avoid confusion. Thus, 20:25 would be 12 hours after midnight plus eight hours after noon, and 25 minutes. In other Words, 20:25 is 8:25 p.m.