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.
this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2024
128 points (99.2% liked)
Interesting Global News
2613 readers
1461 users here now
What is global news?
Something that happened or was uncovered recently anywhere in the world. It doesn't have to have global implications. Just has to be informative in some way.
Post guidelines
Title format
Post title should mirror the news source title.
URL format
Post URL should be the original link to the article (even if paywalled) and archived copies left in the body. It allows avoiding duplicate posts when cross-posting.
[Opinion] prefix
Opinion (op-ed) articles must use [Opinion] prefix before the title.
Rules
1. English only
Title and associated content has to be in English.
2. No social media posts
Avoid all social media posts. Try searching for a source that has a written article or transcription on the subject.
3. Respectful communication
All communication has to be respectful of differing opinions, viewpoints, and experiences.
4. Inclusivity
Everyone is welcome here regardless of age, body size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, caste, color, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.
5. Ad hominem attacks
Any kind of personal attacks are expressly forbidden. If you can't argue your position without attacking a person's character, you already lost the argument.
6. Off-topic tangents
Stay on topic. Keep it relevant.
7. Instance rules may apply
If something is not covered by community rules, but are against lemmy.zip instance rules, they will be enforced.
Companion communities
- [email protected] - International and local legal news.
- [email protected] - Technology, social media platforms, informational technologies and tech policy.
- [email protected] - Interesting articles, projects, and research that doesn't fit the definition of news.
- [email protected] - News and information from Europe.
Icon attribution | Banner attribution
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
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
Any particular spot on the moon does have a day-night cycle, and the length of that does vary throughout the lunar year. Lunar daylight savings here we come!
Sure but it's like a month long? Haha
monthlight savings time then
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.
so atomic clocks on the moon would go out of sync over a long period compared to those on earth...
When you are measuring precise distance to the Moon using lasers, 50 microseconds is about 1.5 kilometers.
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.
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.
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.
Our satellites always drift and need to be corrected, though I guess they don't exactly have a time zone?
USAonce again looking for units not used by anyone else /j
Hear the programmers groan
Because there’s less gravity on the moon, time there moves a tad more quickly – 58.7 microseconds every day – compared with on Earth.
I thought time dilation was caused by bodies moving at high speeds relative to one another, not differences in gravity.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_time_dilation
Hey, it’s 6am and I learned something new today. :)