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Europe pushing for lunar time zone

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181–190 of 406 posts

Re: Europe pushing for lunar time zone

#181

I don't get it, why don't we just use UTC ?

There's a whole lot of social conventions tied to local time, sunrise/sundown, and the circadian rythm in general.

Sure, it'd be possible but we'd have to concieve a lot of new cultural concepts to replace the ones invalidated by the shift to UTC, and find new ways to remind people that it's impolite to call people in the middle of the night.

In the long run, a list of time zones aren't that much more complicated to work with than a list of times when it's mid-day is in the major population centres on the planet.

Re: Europe pushing for lunar time zone

#182

Sending good vibes to the engineers who will have to add Moon time support to the Java DateTime class.

Can't wait for Martian Time support Then Java will have to support days longer than 24 hours.

Lunar days are longer than 24 hours (~29.5 earth days)

Re: Europe pushing for lunar time zone

#183

I am a proponent of a Martian timekeeping system where each day has 24 hours 39 minutes and 35.244 seconds and all the rest of time units have standard lengths. For example, at midnight your martian clock would show the time as 24:39:35 for a fraction of a second, then wound back to 00:00:00. The calendar then would track the Earth calendar as close as possible, with shortened months to accommodate for the longer day…

> The calendar then would track the Earth calendar as close as possible, with shortened months to accommodate for the longer days.

Why bother with months? Why not just count weeks? You could use something like the ISO 8601 week calendar – the year is divided into weeks. Weeks run Monday (1) to Sunday (7). Every year beings on a Monday – ISO 8601 has two years, the Gregorian year (starts on 1 January) and the ISO week year (always starts on Monday). The ISO week year always contains a whole number of weeks, either 52 or 53, so the first day of the ISO week year is often a few days before or after 1 January. 2023-W09-2 is an ISO week date, it is the 2nd day (Tuesday) of the 9th week of 2023.

So, here's my idea for a Martian calendar. The base unit is the Martian day (sol) of 24h39m35.244s. 7 Martian days is a Martian week. The calendar year is based on the Earth year, but it starts on the Monday of the Martian week closest to 1 Jan 00:00 UTC.

Re: Europe pushing for lunar time zone

#184

Still think life would be simpler if we all just adopted .beats (Swatch Internet Time): https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time

Your heart rate then becomes unitless

Beats per beat? I can think of more confusing language constructs.

Plus acceleration is metres per second per second and that isn't unitless.

One solution though would be to make use of one of the freed up words and use minute instead of beat. So we could say minutes per beat. Does that deal with your concern?

Re: Europe pushing for lunar time zone

#185

I am a proponent of a Martian timekeeping system where each day has 24 hours 39 minutes and 35.244 seconds and all the rest of time units have standard lengths. For example, at midnight your martian clock would show the time as 24:39:35 for a fraction of a second, then wound back to 00:00:00. The calendar then would track the Earth calendar as close as possible, with shortened months to accommodate for the longer day…

Do you honestly consider modifying the core idea of the 24 hour day to be a "slight tweak"? I can't even imagine how many different things rely on that assumption. (and I'm sorry, but what does "naming months and seasons in Mars" have to do with this?)

cough leap second cough

Re: Europe pushing for lunar time zone

#189
post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's true they can just blow up the Moon for all I care.

And now we know the true explanation of the first paragraph of Seveneves : The Moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason. It was waxing, only one day short of full. The time was 05:03:12 UTC. Later it would be designated A+0.0.0, or simply Zero.

Wanted to add this to my list of books to read, only to find that of course 'Neal Stephenson' was already there.

Thnx anyways

Re: Europe pushing for lunar time zone

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer KSR's "time gap". At midnight on mars, everyone just gets a 40 minute period where the clocks don't move.

Cue sci-fi dystopia where the totalitarian Mars gov't gases (or somehow otherwise knocks out) everyone for 40 minutes while they search the place and haul off dissidents.

You definitely need to watch Dark City (if you haven't already!)

The movie does a variation on this exact plot. Very well, even.

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