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The Last POWER1 CPU on Mars Is Dead

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Re: The Last POWER1 CPU on Mars Is Dead

#21

Post by bdamm »

Aardwolf wrote: post #4
saagarjha wrote: post #3

There are still Power chips (based on PowerPC 750) on Curiosity; it's just POWER1 that's dead: > That's not the end of Power ISA chips on Mars, though: Curiosity, which is running a pair of RAD750s (one main and one backup, plus two SPARC accessory CPUs), is still in operation at 2,319 Mars solar days and ticking.

> it's just POWER1 that's dead Is it certain that the chip is not still getting some power and running something?

Kind of a Schrödinger's cat problem, is it not? For all purposes it is dead to us.

Re: The Last POWER1 CPU on Mars Is Dead

#22

Post by sixdimensional »

yingw787 wrote: 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've always thought one would need a quantum clock to accomplish the same "instant" across the universe. Something that starts entangled and therefore stays in sync regardless of space and distance.

That's a complete amateur physicist taking a stab at it!! I'm probably horribly wrong :)

Re: The Last POWER1 CPU on Mars Is Dead

#23

Post by tomp »

hermitdev wrote: post #14
dahfizz wrote: 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.

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.

Really? Can't you just anchor to e.g. one revolution of the planet? That should be synchronizable...

Re: The Last POWER1 CPU on Mars Is Dead

#24

Post by twodave »

yingw787 wrote: 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…

Well the problem is a "second" is just a unit of rotation of the Earth on its axis. So you'd either need to use some other reference material than a rotating body in space or else use some arbitrary one (like Earth, since that's where we are from!) and choose a reference date (why not use one we're all familiar with? I know! We could use the UNIX epoch!).

Even if you did this, your universal time would just be a synchronizing tool. Each human consumer would expect it to be translated into the most relevant time to them. If you think it's hard getting people to adopt a standardized date/time on one planet, every planet you add to the system makes that an exponentially more difficult task.

Re: The Last POWER1 CPU on Mars Is Dead

#25

Post by ajkjk »

sixdimensional wrote: post #22
yingw787 wrote: 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've always thought one would need a quantum clock to accomplish the same "instant" across the universe. Something that starts entangled and therefore stays in sync regardless of space and distance. That's a complete amateur physicist taking a stab at it!! I'm probably horribly wrong :)

That's not possible. Quantum mechanics doesn't give you clocks anyway, but if it did it still couldn't solve the problem of time dilation either.

Re: The Last POWER1 CPU on Mars Is Dead

#27

Post by tomp »

dahfizz wrote: post #8
yingw787 wrote: 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.

Yeah I don't entirely understand why we don't that already... Like, websites should be sending UNIX time to clients, and then the browser should display it in users local timezone/format.

Re: The Last POWER1 CPU on Mars Is Dead

#28

Post by [deleted] »

yingw787 wrote: 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…

[deleted]

Re: The Last POWER1 CPU on Mars Is Dead

#29

Post by noir_lord »

twodave wrote: post #24
yingw787 wrote: 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…

Well the problem is a "second" is just a unit of rotation of the Earth on its axis. So you'd either need to use some other reference material than a rotating body in space or else use some arbitrary one (like Earth, since that's where we are from!) and choose a reference date (why not use one we're all familiar with? I know! We could use the UNIX epoch!). Even if you did this, your universal time would just be a sync…

> We could use the UNIX epoch!

Vernor Vinge got there way ahead of you, If you haven't read his books and given the way this community slants you are missing out.

> Take the Traders' method of timekeeping. The frame corrections were incredibly complex - and down at the very bottom of it was a little program that ran a counter. Second by second, the Qeng Ho counted from the instant that a human had first set foot on Old Earth's moon. But if you looked at it still more closely ... the starting instant was actually about fifteen million seconds later, the 0-second of one of Humankind's first computer operating systems.

Re: The Last POWER1 CPU on Mars Is Dead

#30

Post by mey »

twodave wrote: post #24
yingw787 wrote: 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…

Well the problem is a "second" is just a unit of rotation of the Earth on its axis. So you'd either need to use some other reference material than a rotating body in space or else use some arbitrary one (like Earth, since that's where we are from!) and choose a reference date (why not use one we're all familiar with? I know! We could use the UNIX epoch!). Even if you did this, your universal time would just be a sync…

It was previously based on rotation of the earth. It was converted to atomic analysis of the caesium atom in 1967.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_System_of_Units#...

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