Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Europe pushing for lunar time zone

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 406 posts

Re: Europe pushing for lunar time zone

#51

Post by nme01 »

BerislavLopac wrote: post #30
wolverine876 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What we should really do is just get rid of all this crap and go with metric time that starts at an arbitrary moment and isn’t dependent on location. What do you do about relativistic effects which cause time to move at different rates in different places, including on the Moon. From TFA: > Clocks run faster on the moon than on Earth, gaining about 56 microseconds each day, the space agency said. Further complicati…

How is that even possible? Does cesium have a different frequency there?

From earths perspective, yes.

It’s just that time really passes quicker on Moon (not just an illusion).

Re: Europe pushing for lunar time zone

#52

Post by [deleted] »

BerislavLopac wrote: post #30
wolverine876 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What we should really do is just get rid of all this crap and go with metric time that starts at an arbitrary moment and isn’t dependent on location. What do you do about relativistic effects which cause time to move at different rates in different places, including on the Moon. From TFA: > Clocks run faster on the moon than on Earth, gaining about 56 microseconds each day, the space agency said. Further complicati…

How is that even possible? Does cesium have a different frequency there?

[deleted]

Re: Europe pushing for lunar time zone

#53

Post by Beldin »

BerislavLopac wrote: post #30
wolverine876 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What we should really do is just get rid of all this crap and go with metric time that starts at an arbitrary moment and isn’t dependent on location. What do you do about relativistic effects which cause time to move at different rates in different places, including on the Moon. From TFA: > Clocks run faster on the moon than on Earth, gaining about 56 microseconds each day, the space agency said. Further complicati…

How is that even possible? Does cesium have a different frequency there?

Lunar gravity is about 1/6th of Earth gravity. Clocks slow down due to gravity (Einstein's relativity). Thus, clocks tick faster if there's less gravity.

Aside: we can measure this effect on Earth, between the foot and top of a mountain. Tom Scott has a video about exactly that.

Re: Europe pushing for lunar time zone

#55

Post by beebeepka »

rascul wrote: post #8

I would be happy if we got rid of timezones, got rid of daylight savings time, and got rid of 12 hour clocks.

Of course you've been downvoted.

I believe humanity is just one generation away from being able to get rid of the idea that noon is 12:00 and 24:00 is midnight.

I think I've heard all the arguments against and they all boil down to "no, old days are best".

Re: Europe pushing for lunar time zone

#56

Post by fretn »

Beldin wrote: post #43
tanbog5 wrote: post #27

Are relativity effects significant on the moon? I thought a rationale for this was the need to account for relativistic effects making clocks run at slightly different speeds on the moon than on the surface of the earth. Is the "timezone" more of conversation protocol for earth time to moon time? Current missions use a synchronised mission clock and don't last long enough for this to be a big issue right?

> Are relativity effects significant on the moon? Yes, as the article states, clocks run faster on the Moon. About 56 microseconds per day. Be that as it may, as far as I know, Newtonian gravity was sufficient for the moon landings. So I'm guessing this is more of a coordination issue between countries than a necessity for trajectories or such.

Forgive me my ignorance but does that mean that you age at a different speed at the moon compared to earth ?

Re: Europe pushing for lunar time zone

#57

Post by midoridensha »

lostlogin wrote: post #12
petesergeant wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the EU won’t bite the bullet and just adopt English as the official language, there’s no way they’re pinning this to Greenwich time

Having English as the official language of the EU when England isn’t in the EU would be quite funny.

What other language could the EU possibly use as a common language for communications between member states? English is the only language that you can use everywhere within the union and have a decent chance of being able to communicate with people (and this is true everywhere else in the world too).

Re: Europe pushing for lunar time zone

#58

Post by likis »

plufz wrote: post #40
rascul wrote: post #8

I would be happy if we got rid of timezones, got rid of daylight savings time, and got rid of 12 hour clocks.

I’m with you on the last two but a life without timezones sounds horrible. So many issues, like having to relearn the clock when you are in another timezone. I’ll meet you for lunch at 06.00! Life is based around the sun. Having some sort of agreed upon world timezone would be neat though, whether that was GMT or something less euro centric. So everyone would understand “we have a zoom meeting at 11.00 WT” instead of…

> "Having some sort of agreed upon world timezone would be neat though ..."

Don't we already have that with UTC / Zulu time?

Re: Europe pushing for lunar time zone

#59

Post by Taywee »

scbrg wrote: post #37
wolverine876 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'I'll call you tomorrow.' 'Tomorrow clock time or tomorrow after the Sun rises?'

So we'd need to adjust our terminology a bit. I'm sure the world wouldn't end because of that. It's always amusing to me how opponents of the idea of abolishing time zones assume that everything will stay the same, except, well abolishing of time zones. Apparently in the moment we do so, humanity will be become incapable of adjusting even the slightest. It will be impossible to invent a couple of new terms to let peo…

We spend a huge amount of our time talking about and reasoning about time. Destroying the meaning of all of the language we've built up is pretty significant. More importantly, it basically ensures that all that terminology will be vastly different when you live in different parts of the world, where the day changes in the morning vs the middle of the solar day vs the evening vs the middle of the night. Weekday names will be entirely regional, and their implications will be as well.

Re: Europe pushing for lunar time zone

#60

Post by Daz1 »

doctor_eval wrote: post #44
alex_young wrote: post #31

A zone of what though? Time zones, are zones of our planet where we observe time in some coordinated fashion. If we're adding the moon, what part of our globe should it be considered a part of? This all seems pretty silly.

It’s not about creating an earth based zone for the moon. It’s about creating a system of recording time that works on the moon. Time doesn’t work the same on the moon as on earth, so why should they be linked? Earth clocks are basically about the position of a point on earth, relative to the sun. The moon’s relationship with the sun is quite entirely different. So where is the equivalent of Greenwich on the moon? Do…

Why needlessly complicate things? Use GMT + 0, earth days, and earth weeks. Why introduce all this unnecessary confusion? There is no practical need to measure local time on the moon.

>Earth clocks and moon clocks don’t run at the same time, due to relativity.

I'm sure the 1/3000th of a millisecond per year won't be a problem

Post reply on HN