Space agency tasked with establishing Coordinated Lunar Time, partly to aid missions requiring extreme precision

Archived version: https://archive.ph/ObWSZ

  • Buffalobuffalo@reddthat.com
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    50
    ·
    7 months ago

    Unlike on Earth, the moon will not have daylight saving time, Coggins said

    I don’t know why but the idea that there might be daylight savings time on the moon is hilarious.

    • ryannathans@aussie.zone
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      7 months ago

      Maybe if the Moon rotated like Earth it would be a thought but you can’t really save daylight when it’s tidally locked hmmm

      Daylight savings sucks anyway

  • 5765313496@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    24
    ·
    edit-2
    7 months ago

    Because there’s less gravity on the moon, time there moves a tad more quickly – 58.7 microseconds every day – compared to on Earth.

    Okay, that’s even cooler than I thought.

    • stebo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      7 months ago

      so atomic clocks on the moon would go out of sync over a long period compared to those on earth…

      • pelya@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        7 months ago

        When you are measuring precise distance to the Moon using lasers, 50 microseconds is about 1.5 kilometers.

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          7 months ago

          Except the light is also affected by time dilation so surely it wouldn’t matter.

          It would only matter if you were measuring a distance between a satellite and the surface.

  • RandomStickman@kbin.run
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    7 months ago

    I wonder how they’ll end up implementing it. If it’s going to forever drift apart from Earth time/UTC it feels problematic as well.

    • Mossy Feathers (They/Them)@pawb.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      edit-2
      7 months ago

      I mean, that’s just physics for you. Because gravity influences time, any extraterrestrial colony is going to have at least a slight difference in a seconds duration compared to earth.

      For the average person, the slight difference in the length of a second will probably be unnoticeable. Any differences would likely be overshadowed by the length of a day, season or year, assuming the planet in question even experiences those naturally. For an example, tidally-locked planets don’t have natural days.

      It would potentially pose problems for time-sensitive scientific research. However, that could be resolved by creating an independent time standard based on outside phenomenon, like pulses from a neutron star, and then creating conversion tables for different colonies. I’m guessing that might be what NASA ends up doing, though there could be issues with that method that I’m unaware of.

    • ryannathans@aussie.zone
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      7 months ago

      Our satellites always drift and need to be corrected, though I guess they don’t exactly have a time zone?