Live data from Hacker News

The Last POWER1 CPU on Mars Is Dead

talospace.com

11–20 of 145 posts

Re: The Last POWER1 CPU on Mars Is Dead

#11
post #5

Might be O/T, but I found it really interesting how they mention "5,352 Martian solar days". Do we humans have plans in the pipeline for a universal time standard we can use wherever we are? Something that is a little more useful than "seconds since UNIX epoch" but something a little less terrestrial than UTC? Or is time going to be based wherever we land or travel (e.g. divide up Mars into time zones upon colonizati…

recently I was wondering about time keeping on Mars, did they create a local clock network like we have with UTC here?

Re: The Last POWER1 CPU on Mars Is Dead

#12
post #8
post #5

Might be O/T, but I found it really interesting how they mention "5,352 Martian solar days". Do we humans have plans in the pipeline for a universal time standard we can use wherever we are? Something that is a little more useful than "seconds since UNIX epoch" but something a little less terrestrial than UTC? Or is time going to be based wherever we land or travel (e.g. divide up Mars into time zones upon colonizati…

I don't really see the problem with standardizing on 'seconds since the epoch' for any interplanetary communication and having clients convert to something more meaningful to humans. Any other "universal" time format will be just as meaningless when days and seasons are all different lengths.

Relaticistic effects mean you have to resync clocks anyways, just like satelites in orbit need to do

Re: The Last POWER1 CPU on Mars Is Dead

#13
post #5

Might be O/T, but I found it really interesting how they mention "5,352 Martian solar days". Do we humans have plans in the pipeline for a universal time standard we can use wherever we are? Something that is a little more useful than "seconds since UNIX epoch" but something a little less terrestrial than UTC? Or is time going to be based wherever we land or travel (e.g. divide up Mars into time zones upon colonizati…

Agreed, I’d like it to be called “star date” like Star Trek but with fewer numbers involved.

Tcl is ready for it: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1024711/hidden-features-...

Re: The Last POWER1 CPU on Mars Is Dead

#14
post #8
post #5

Might be O/T, but I found it really interesting how they mention "5,352 Martian solar days". Do we humans have plans in the pipeline for a universal time standard we can use wherever we are? Something that is a little more useful than "seconds since UNIX epoch" but something a little less terrestrial than UTC? Or is time going to be based wherever we land or travel (e.g. divide up Mars into time zones upon colonizati…

I don't really see the problem with standardizing on 'seconds since the epoch' for any interplanetary communication and having clients convert to something more meaningful to humans. Any other "universal" time format will be just as meaningless when days and seasons are all different lengths.

The problem comes in due to relativity. Mars and Earth (and other planetoids) travel at different speeds. The very length of a second will drift over time.

Re: The Last POWER1 CPU on Mars Is Dead

#15
post #5

Might be O/T, but I found it really interesting how they mention "5,352 Martian solar days". Do we humans have plans in the pipeline for a universal time standard we can use wherever we are? Something that is a little more useful than "seconds since UNIX epoch" but something a little less terrestrial than UTC? Or is time going to be based wherever we land or travel (e.g. divide up Mars into time zones upon colonizati…

There is BCT [0] which corrects for gravitational time dilation on Earth relative to the solar system, but I'm not aware of anything on a universal scale. It seems conceptually difficult to do synchronization if the communication round trip time, bounded below by the speed of light, is significant.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barycentric_Coordinate_Time

Re: The Last POWER1 CPU on Mars Is Dead

#16
post #5

Might be O/T, but I found it really interesting how they mention "5,352 Martian solar days". Do we humans have plans in the pipeline for a universal time standard we can use wherever we are? Something that is a little more useful than "seconds since UNIX epoch" but something a little less terrestrial than UTC? Or is time going to be based wherever we land or travel (e.g. divide up Mars into time zones upon colonizati…

must be Terran time, as literally all humans are currently either on Earth or orbiting around Earth, so literally everyone can relate

Re: The Last POWER1 CPU on Mars Is Dead

#17
post #5

Might be O/T, but I found it really interesting how they mention "5,352 Martian solar days". Do we humans have plans in the pipeline for a universal time standard we can use wherever we are? Something that is a little more useful than "seconds since UNIX epoch" but something a little less terrestrial than UTC? Or is time going to be based wherever we land or travel (e.g. divide up Mars into time zones upon colonizati…

Agreed, I’d like it to be called “star date” like Star Trek but with fewer numbers involved.

I was disappointed to recently learn that star dates were basically arbitrary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stardate

Re: The Last POWER1 CPU on Mars Is Dead

#18
post #8
post #5

Might be O/T, but I found it really interesting how they mention "5,352 Martian solar days". Do we humans have plans in the pipeline for a universal time standard we can use wherever we are? Something that is a little more useful than "seconds since UNIX epoch" but something a little less terrestrial than UTC? Or is time going to be based wherever we land or travel (e.g. divide up Mars into time zones upon colonizati…

I don't really see the problem with standardizing on 'seconds since the epoch' for any interplanetary communication and having clients convert to something more meaningful to humans. Any other "universal" time format will be just as meaningless when days and seasons are all different lengths.

At a certain point of accuracy you run into issues with this - seconds don't pass at the same rate due to relativistic effects (both speed and gravitational).

An example we already deal with is GPS satellites orbiting Earth. Their clocks tick a little bit slower on account of how fast they're orbiting, and tick a bit faster on account of being further up Earth's gravity well. The gravitational effect is stronger, and the net effect is that a GPS clock advances an extra 38 microseconds over the course of a day (as measured by a clock on the ground).

http://physicscentral.com/explore/writers/will.cfm

So when you try to standardize on "seconds since the epoch," the inevitable question is "Seconds according to who?"

Re: The Last POWER1 CPU on Mars Is Dead

#19
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see the problem with standardizing on 'seconds since the epoch' for any interplanetary communication and having clients convert to something more meaningful to humans. Any other "universal" time format will be just as meaningless when days and seasons are all different lengths.

At a certain point of accuracy you run into issues with this - seconds don't pass at the same rate due to relativistic effects (both speed and gravitational). An example we already deal with is GPS satellites orbiting Earth. Their clocks tick a little bit slower on account of how fast they're orbiting, and tick a bit faster on account of being further up Earth's gravity well. The gravitational effect is stronger, and…

Seconds according to the atomic clocks at NIST. People operating clocks moving at relativistic speeds will apply the necessary corrections, as GPS satellites already do.

Re: The Last POWER1 CPU on Mars Is Dead

#20
post #5

Might be O/T, but I found it really interesting how they mention "5,352 Martian solar days". Do we humans have plans in the pipeline for a universal time standard we can use wherever we are? Something that is a little more useful than "seconds since UNIX epoch" but something a little less terrestrial than UTC? Or is time going to be based wherever we land or travel (e.g. divide up Mars into time zones upon colonizati…

> Do we humans have plans in the pipeline for a universal time standard we can use wherever we are?

this made me think of Swatch Internet Time, and whether or not it could have worked.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time

Post reply on HN