5 ms·
Would it not be simpler for everyone involved to just use UTC?
by palmfacehn 3y ago
Would it not be simpler for everyone involved to just use UTC?
- sp332 3y agoNo, you would have to calibrate the clocks to run slower to match earth seconds when they are in the moon's weaker gravity. Or constantly sync them to an Earth time source with over two seconds latency.
- queuebert 3y agoNTP has several methods for dealing with large latency that could possibly be adapted.
- masswerk 3y agoBut, using your own frame of reference, you now need to convert to and fro on each cross-access. I don't really see the advantage. Notably, there is no such thing as an ontological second, it's an abstract measurement unit (loosely) bound to the rotation and revolution of the Earth. Moreover, there is no provision for such a cross-reference of basic progression of time in any Date/Time system currently available. Wouldn't be adding a constant coefficient easier? (Notably, we have modified basic constants several times, already.)
- Jeff_Brown 3y agoThat was my thought. Who cares what time it feels like on the moon, if the people making plans and decisions about it are at, say, Cape Canaveral? Once we get humans on the moon, they'll probably want their own time zones -- but in that case this solution still won't be enough, because they'll probably want the time to depend on their lunar longitude, just like it does on Earth.
- TrueGeek 3y agoSure, go ahead and ignore what people on the moon feel because Earth is more important. It's all fun and games until people start throwing rocks.
- bluGill 3y agoNo human has walked on the moon in my lifetime (last human left December 1972). I'm somewhat against going back because I like to tease old people about this (which isn't a good reason I know, but it is fun). Even if/when humans again walk on the moon it will just be a short trip and they will head back to earth (Likely China, but India is realistic, other countries that could realistically send someone to the moon don't seem very interested in trying) Their missions will be planed from Earth, and they will otherwise want to match earth time so they can contact people back on Earth. If in the distance future we put colony on the moon, the people will drift apart from earth and so I expect the kids born on the moon will not care about earth time so much and may eventually demand a switch to moon time. OTOH, I think what they really want out of moon time (light cycles are too long to be useful humans) probably isn't what we think today.
- williamcotton 3y agoIn this distant future I imagine that getting to Earth from the Moon is pretty easy and very common. I doubt people move off of an Earth-centric time. Of course this would be very different for planets or solar systems far from Earth.
- bluGill 3y agoI would think it is more like going from North America to Australia. Possible, you are likely to know someone who did - but it isn't common because between cost and the travel time is just isn't worth it.
- black6 3y agoHarsh
- hansvm 3y agoIt would be even simpler to use a standard without leap seconds (or at least just without negative leap seconds). The drift happens slowly enough that nobody will notice the qualitative elements of 8am changing slightly over their lifetime.
- layer8 3y agoThe drift is speeding up long-term though.
- hansvm 3y agoI'm optimistic we'll have better synchronization mechanisms in the distant future than "8am == sunrise, +/- a few hours". That said, interestingly, the quadratic nature of that problem (the earth slowing down progressively faster over time) means that the gap between when we have to care about my solution (because we accumulate too many leap seconds per lifetime) and the leap second solution (because you can only insert a little over 365 per year with the current protocol) is much smaller than the gap between now and when we would have to care about my solution. If you're not too picky, the two solutions "expire" around the same time. The max rate of leap second insertion only admits an hour of drift per decade, which is slow enough that I still think most people wouldn't care, and they might like if our time handling is simple enough that we can't repeat the recent xz supply chain issue in hundreds of thousands of lines of increasingly complex datetime nonsense.
- prpl 3y agoTAI feels so left out in its moment to shine.
- ISL 3y agoTAI doesn't help. Observers on Earth and the Moon will forever disagree about the other's duration of a second (unless they account for the relativity corrections that make them appear to be different).