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OpenBSD adds support for Coordinated Mars Time

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Re: OpenBSD adds support for Coordinated Mars Time

#23
post #17

It's interesting that time and date semantics are based on the rotation and orbits of planets. A truly universal time should probably be based on the orbits or other oscillations of atoms, possibly away from a gravity well and at a precise temperature.

Our solar system is rotating within our galaxy, presumably you have to travel quite a bit before being „away from a gravity well“. But at that „location“, there may be a lot of relative velocity to our solar system, so there will be time dilation effects - for us or them, depending on your reference frame.

...One of the first things you learn in special relativity is that there are no preferred reference frames, I still have trouble wrapping my head around that one.

Re: OpenBSD adds support for Coordinated Mars Time

#26
post #3

Naming something that only works on one planet " Universal Coordinated Time" was a mistake.

It doesn't matter till we'll be actually able to settle down on Mars permanently, I guess and differentiating from Mars local time and its time zones will be an issue (and all parties involved in colonization will agree that Airy-0 crater will remain the 0° longitude equivalent as proposed by IAU). Beside, the perspective matters - for people on Earth it can be still UTC, for those on Mars it can be whatever term they'll find most suitable.

The scifi series Babylon 5 with its titular station used Earth Standard Time [1] while being placed in Epsilon Eridani system. That doesn't sound bad, I think.

The another issue the future colonists will have to deal with will be how to track days, months and years. There's Thomas Gangale's suggestion that does look interesting [2].

[1] - https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Earth_Standard_Time [2] - http://ops-alaska.com/time/gangale_mst/darian.htm

Re: OpenBSD adds support for Coordinated Mars Time

#28
post #26
post #3

Naming something that only works on one planet " Universal Coordinated Time" was a mistake.

It doesn't matter till we'll be actually able to settle down on Mars permanently, I guess and differentiating from Mars local time and its time zones will be an issue (and all parties involved in colonization will agree that Airy-0 crater will remain the 0° longitude equivalent as proposed by IAU). Beside, the perspective matters - for people on Earth it can be still UTC, for those on Mars it can be whatever term the…

> It doesn't matter till we'll be actually able to settle down on Mars permanently

Mars is the least useful planetary body in the Solar System for human colonization, so that time may well be "never".

Re: OpenBSD adds support for Coordinated Mars Time

#29
The clock was conceived to align human periodicity to the periodicity of earths day and night cycle (e.g. waking up at the same time every day) but also to synchronize the people around you (e.g. working at the same time every day).

When working in an intertimezonal setting, however, that concept of a 24h day felt very weird. While the day and night cycle indeed is roughly 24h, the human productivity cycle appeared longer in duration as some people were having a normal morning work start at 1:00am on my clock and 8:00am their time.

This shifts the mental model to what it means for deliverables to be produced “today” or “on day X”. Is it their day or is it my day? It also shifts the perception of much work per day we are putting in, while on the paper it just is a simple per 24h division. Bob worked an 8h shift in a 24h workday which is in a 24h + 8h + 8h (arbitrary numbers chosen only for visualization) global workday, so did he now work enough? Did he work “all day”?

I came to the realization that a 24h long workday in such a setting feels arbitrary and off. It should be longer, but how long exactly.

This will only get worse once we have clocks running faster the further away we get from the gravitational field of the Sun or work on planets or moons with different day/night cycles.

How would one do it inside an Asteroid Mining Colony?

Re: OpenBSD adds support for Coordinated Mars Time

#30

How exactly would you ensure nanosecond accuracy of time between earth and mars? Does Nasa just run ntp back to earth? Or really expensive atomic clocks made out of special metals?

Assuming this is not an April Fools joke, I guess you wouldn't. Probably during travel measurable relativistic time difference has already set in and the nanosecond sync to earth might already differ by that. (If you manage to sync with ns precision anyways, that would be more an earth-like time/clock :)) Also days are a bit longer on Mars so it would be possible to keep in sync with local days.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafele–Keating_experiment

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