News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Mars Needs Leap Days Too by JoeAltmaier on Monday March 02, 2020 @06:52PM (#22470410)
A spacefaring civilization wouldn't care much at all about planetary motion and seasons. They'd likely go 'metric' with time.

"See you in a kilosec!"

"Oh she got promoted a couple megasecs ago, transferred out."

"I've been up for a hectasec; I have to catch some Z's!"\

"I graduated early, only 5 gigasecs old!"

Re:Mars Needs Leap Days Too by Juliate on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @05:42AM (#22473347)
When you go from Casablanca to Detroit, when you arrive, you adjust to Detroit time (as well as weather, etc.) because this is the place your are in, and only take the pain to compute/represent yourself time in Singapore when you communicate with someone over there (instantly in that case).

When you travel by boat from Southampton to Auckland, during the travel, you mostly only care about the flow of time on the boat, where it is, regardless of the time in the departure & arrival places. You only expect to be in Auckland, around a certain local time.

Going from Earth to Mars, or from the solar system to an Aldebaran planet is slightly the same (but that the flow of time itself may be relative between the places you left/arrived at, and the place you are):

- you expect to be somewhere in the future in about a relative time to where you are (I'll be there in what I know/can represent myself to be X-earth-years);

- you will account for inevitable delays during travel, that might be significant at your scale, but not to others';

- when arrived there, you'll try adjust to the local time keeping method that makes sense to locals - if only because that's how you will interact with them about the flow of time.

You may get to compute what's the relative time on Earth, at the same instant, or when they will get your message. Just as everyone do today (and before) when communicating through slow (aka, human-borne) package & mail delivery.

We can consider having an atomic (or similar) clock that pulse at the same rate, on both Aldebaran & Earth. But:

1. would they be still in sync? experience seems to say no; do we know how we would be even in a position to check that remotely?

2. would it be relevant, relative to Aldebaran-time-keeping? (the atomic second as it is used on Earth is 1/86400th of a full Earth day; it may be wildly on a different planet)

Re:Mars Needs Leap Days Too by bobbylarrybobby on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @01:04AM (#22472216)
Relativity says it’s impossible for two observers to agree on things like simultaneity, distance, duration, etc. Without reference to astronomical landmarks (observed within a given proximity of the solar system, at low speed) how could anyone agree on the meanings of time intervals?
Re:Mars Needs Leap Days Too by wtallis on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @01:27AM (#22472297)
I believe the cosmic microwave background provides a reasonably universal rest frame to anchor your definitions of time. It should at the very least be a lot less local than using the rest frame of a particular solar system.
Re:Mars Needs Leap Days Too by jurip on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @02:59AM (#22472691)
Second isn't defined in terms of astronomy, it's atomic. Shouldn't matter how fast you go and where. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second#"Atomic"_second
Re:Mars Needs Leap Days Too by Lewton on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @03:25AM (#22472813)
Re:Mars Needs Leap Days Too by jurip on Thursday March 12, 2020 @08:29AM (#22556094)
Duh. Thanks. Not my brightest moment.
Re:Mars Needs Leap Days Too by elihu on Monday March 02, 2020 @07:18PM (#22470587)
Verner Vinge used that system in A Deepness in the Sky. You get used to it after awhile.
Re:Mars Needs Leap Days Too by btilly on Monday March 02, 2020 @07:07PM (#22470508)
5 gigaseconds is about 150 years, so your "graduated early" indicates some serious life extension technology.
Re:Mars Needs Leap Days Too by Aenyn on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @04:37AM (#22473086)
And a hectosecond (which I assume is what a hectasec is) is just one minute and forty seconds... I hope he would be able to stay awake a little longer than that.
Re:Mars Needs Leap Days Too by JoeAltmaier on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @07:31AM (#22473886)
What would the name be for 100,000 seconds? An earth day is 86400 seconds...
Re:Mars Needs Leap Days Too by JoeAltmaier on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @07:30AM (#22473882)
Yeah I figured that out when I was driving home... :)
Re:Mars Needs Leap Days Too by adeeds on Monday March 02, 2020 @07:25PM (#22470613)
or relativistic travel
Re:Mars Needs Leap Days Too by n0rbwah on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @04:28AM (#22473058)
Wouldn't you use subjective time for this kind of things?
Re:Mars Needs Leap Days Too by sudhirj on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @01:51AM (#22472382)
Whose gigasecs, then?
Re:Mars Needs Leap Days Too by jcims on Tuesday March 03, 2020 @02:06AM (#22472440)
Tinder for nerds?
Re:Mars Needs Leap Days Too by richk449 on Monday March 02, 2020 @11:31PM (#22471789)
> A spacefaring civilization wouldn't care much at all about planetary motion and seasons.

Given france’s failed attempt at rational time, what does that say about us as a species?