6 ms·
Having just gone through the daylight savings change here in Europe, I found this really fascinating: how __do__ you set up time for the moon where time, at lea
by docdeek 3y ago
Having just gone through the daylight savings change here in Europe, I found this really fascinating: how __do__ you set up time for the moon where time, at least as we understand it, doesn't really exist?
I'm sure that, starting from scratch on Earth, we'd probably come up with a system of time zones that is broadly similar to what we have today but with some new zones and some adapted zones. Then again, maybe we'd find a way to change things up altogether - is there any value to GMT being based on Greenwich if the UK is not the global power it once was?
- euroderf 3y agoWould time zones even be necessary on the Moon ? Sunrise and sunset occur on a scale of Earth days, not Earth hours.
- jfengel 3y agoNope, no time zones. Just one time zone that is "the moon". But somebody somewhere needs to make a standard for that, and this is it.
- euroderf 3y agoStill tho, how about a prime meridian centered on where Neil Armstrong first set foot ?
- jfengel 3y agoThey don't need any meridians. The entire place will be one zone. The time will be the same everywhere. The problem is that the time there will move very slightly differently than here on earth, because of the lower gravity, to the tune of 60 ms per day. That's almost a second every two weeks. So the question isn't "what time do we set the clocks to?" but "what time will it be an hour from now?" Have a leap-second every few weeks?
- psd1 3y agoGMT is a time zone used in Britain. It is no more special than any other. The standard is UTC. If engineers were in charge, there would be no time zones. Brits would get up at 08:00, Indians at 04:00, and Americans at 12:00/13:00/14:00 depending on location. Shops would set their opening hours relative to local sunrise. It's already the case that work-shifts span calendar days for many people, and that franchise locations have differing hours of business, and that fuckwits telephone you when you're trying to sleep.
- srveale 3y agoPeople's eyes glaze over when I rant about this. But yes, I fantasize about a world where you could say "let's set up a video call at 6" and there's no mental math when there's geographic distance involved. Biggest downside I can think of, apart from the entire population groaning about making the switch, would be the confusion from reading literature from the before times. Oh, and all blood, sweat, and tears of all the devs who created timezone code going down the drain.
- t0mas88 3y agoSome industries do this using UTC. For example flight departure and arrival times are in UTC on all paperwork. And also the meteo reports and forecasts, and airspace restrictions, and airport opening times etc. Mostly out of a necessity that fights tend to cross timezones and planes come and go from all over the world and they don't want to have to figure out everywhere what the local time is. Really only passenger info screens convert to local time.
- psd1 3y agoThe biggest downside would be the date rolling over during a record-keeping period. But this is already a problem and people handle it just fine. I mean, we say "tonight" for 02:30 on the following day, so meh.
- rightbyte 3y agoNo no no. We can't make the world adjust to our crappy code. 24:00 is "mid night". 02:30 is not less 'tonight' than 21:30, assuming no DST.