It's time to mentally prepare yourselves for this
It's time to mentally prepare yourselves for this
255 comments
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No different than any other project the PM/PO team cooks up. Tons of work for no user base.
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I will use moontime. Anybody wants to schedule bullshit meetings will have to commit to figuring out when actually works for them.
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Based on a completely superficial review there are three almost guaranteed ways to become unhinged; studying infinities, refactoring legacy code, and working with timezones.
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Lmao I love how he just gets more and more flabbergasted throughout the whole video. Truly an accurate depiction of dealing with timezones (which I'm unfortunately dealing with right now!)
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We've gone too far. Everyone just switch to UTC please. Yes, it means some will go to bed at 2pm and get up at 10pm, so what.
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go to bed at 2pm and get up at 10pm
While we are making reasonable demands, stop using 12 hour time. Sincerely, everyone else.
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And please, get all countries to actually start properly accepting ISO 8601 format for dates as a mandatory universal standard...
Obligatory reference: https://xkcd.com/1179/
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tldr - you'll just have to do the conversions in your head now because it's useful to know where the sun is at different points on the earth when trying to communicate across those points.
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Maybe this freak should just text uncle steve whatever he wanted, or a "call me when it's convinient" message, and then steve will probably see the notification at some point in his morning routine before too long. If this guy really needed to call steve anyways, for whatever reason, he shouldn't care about time zones, because it's an emergency.
If you were commonly calling whatever place you were calling, you'd probably be able to intuit what time they woke up anyways, so it's all moot.
I dunno. I think it's pretty easy to make a big deal out of time zones and calendar measurements and whatever but I don't think it really, actually matters that much, because the main thing they facilitate is communication. Time zones and timelines should be engineered more around the human condition, I think, than around anything else.
But then, I think, to construct anything around the human condition is kind of paradoxical. If you create a schedule, then you have created a schedule. I.e. if you construct time, then you imply the existence of something that needs to be measured. That implies deadlines.
Frankly, that's too much pressure for me, so I'm going to take the more controversial stance here: Abolish time. No more time, no more numbers measuring when I should do what. You're either gonna tell me whether or not to do something now, or to do it later. The people gotta learn that time is more subjective and contingent, and they gotta start showing up to their work shifts whenever they want to make money, instead of just showing up at a given time when the fuckin steam whistle goes off like it's the 1800s.
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Those that propose moving to UTC should take responsibility and take the +12h offset. Why should we let the brits enjoy +0 offset while the rest of the world got the short end of the stick (especially those living in the pacific)?
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If it makes a dev’s life easier there’s no reason not to upend half the planet.
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In Europe we've been talking about ending DST for years now and it hinges on countries deciding which zone they want to adopt permanently. Why can't they decide? Because the notion of getting up at six and having lunch at 12 is stronger than the cosmic fact of the sun being in the middle of the sky. We just need to decide how we want daylight to fit into that grind.
I say fuck that. If we can't decide, don't. Since we're changing everything anyway, going to UTC will force everyone to think how THEY want to live their lives. When to open stores, whether to move opening hours in winter or summer, when to go to work (both early birds and night owls are great).
Plus in today's globalized world, 14:00 will be 14:00 everywhere. You decide for yourself if you're working then or not if somebody sends a meeting request halfway across the world.
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Why switch? It's not too complicated a concept for the average person to understand and deal with. In fact, it's intuitive. Sure in software the logic has a few nuances that are a bit complex when needing to deal with local time and timezones, but that's why we make the computers do the tricky work.
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Personally, I think it's just easier. Yes, computers and stuff, but we've perverted local time long ago with DST and country spanning single time zones, so might as well use one global zone and get rid of the confusion altogether.
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required reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY
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Because it makes getting an intuitive sense of what solar time it is somewhere harder.
Can I call my grandma in a different country? Hmm what time is average midnight there. Okay 8 (so far, same thing as looking up a timezone), and it's 18:00 now, so 10 hours after midnight, which is like my 23:00. Needlessly complicated with extra steps for the average person.
Sure, you can say, I'll call you X and that will mean the same thing everywhere, but does not have any information about solar time. And these days, it's automatically converted if you use a calendar (which you should). This is the point of programming, to make the USERS life easier, not the dev. The end is more important than the means, I think we can agree.
Or: what time is it where my grandma is? Okay, cool, I have a sense of what that is immediately after knowing the answer.
There are reasons we do things this way. Working roughly to solar times has more benefits than being able to say a time and it mean the same moment everywhere.
I say we leave things the way they are, works okay.
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I'm just saying, but we did.
Pretty much every electronic thing you own that resembles a computer (phones, tablets, laptops, desktops, even your damned TV) uses UTC. Every. Single. One. Translates that time to "local" whenever it needs to.
So when your TV goes from 9:32 to 9:33, is just showing the converted time from UTC each time.
Almost every device on the planet is keeping time in UTC.
Just because you don't see UTC time on your device, doesn't mean that's not what's happening. I had an issue where I needed to get into my computer's bios for something, as soon as the BIOS loaded and showed the time, it was "wrong" because it was in UTC. I'm sure plenty of newer BIOS dialogs are configured to account for timezones now, so yeah. I might be unique in this. It's still there.
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as soon as the BIOS loaded and showed the time, it was "wrong" because it was in UTC
Because you don't use Windows. Windows by default stores local time, not UTC, to the RTC. This behavior can be overriden with a registry tweak. Some Linux distro installer disks (at least Ubuntu and Fedora, maybe others) will try to detect if your system has an existing Windows install and mimicks this behavior if one exists (equivalent to
timedatectl set-local-rtc 1) and otherwise defaults to storing UTC, which is the more sane choice.Storing localtime on a computer that has more than one bootable OS becomes a particularly noticable problem in regions that observe DST, because each OS will try to change the RTC by one hour on its first boot after the time change.
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UTC does not account for time dilation.
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No, TAI
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That's it, I'm only using epoch from now on, that's enough of your time zone shenanigans
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Except the length of a second is different on the moon because of relativity. So even utc is wrong.
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UTC doesn't become wrong, you can either just accept a different pace of the clock, i.e. earth ppl will be ever so late to a meeting or it's just a different kind of timezone conversion. Better would be to have a single time based on the reference frame of the center of the galaxy and everyone keep there time relative to that.
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Yep, and the math gives different results based on if you're on the moon or on earth.
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No the second is still 9192631770 hyperfine transitions of Cs-133 on the moon and that's the same length of time at least unless you want to severely annoy physicists by implying that the laws of nature aren't constant throughout the universe. It's just that from our perspective it looks like time is flowing differently there.
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So, in this case a moon timezone, and more generally a "space timekeeping framework" makes sense because time actually moves at a different speed on the moon, so epoch times wouldn't actually stay in sync.
If the goal of "time" is to make it easier to reason about simultaneous things, then space makes that way more complicated.
It's just tricky to condense that into a headline that conveys the point. -
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I suspect that won't help. The reason the Moon needs a time zone is because of gravitational time dilation, time literally runs slower down here on Earth's surface relative to the Moon's surface. A computer on the Moon gains an extra 58.7 microseconds each Earth day, so if you're programming something that'll be running on Lunar time you'll need to account for that.
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Don't you dare, I have enough trouble reading 24 hour time.
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All we need is a single universal Space-Time map that will tell the time (in any and all formats) at any point in space, taking into consideration, all the events caused by all the forces that cause existence, from the start of this universe. Then it can take the place of both, maps and clocks.
Just make sure it is memory safe. Oh and properly escape all queries. And also ...
That should last us until we start exploring the space outside the universe.
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The proposed time zone is to drift about 1 second every 50 years. I also suspect it wouldn't really be a time zone in the same sense as the time zones we know - it would just be a standardised calibration reference. Dates and times expressed in "moon time" would probably just be some leap second off of a known Earth time zone, and because it's mere seconds over centuries, I think the only use of this time zone is to calculate ultra-precise time diffs between two earth datetimes when the observer is on the moon. At least, that's how I interpret the articles I can find about it.
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It's also important for things like GPS, as related to other planets, as well as orbital maneuvering.
What they're actually being told to build is "write down the rules for moon time", which is basically what you said but defined in terms of "this much faster than earth time", and a system doing the same thing on other planets or places in the solar system.
So it's less a timezone and more a time system, and instructions for how you calibrate your atomic clock on the moon and reconcile the difference with terrestrial clocks.
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Serious question....why would an entirely isolated GPS constellation need to have "a time zone" as opposed to it's own epoch (like unix)? It's on the receiver side that all the computation happens, aren't the satellites essentially just announcing an agreed-upon time? Wouldn't the client be able to do it's own comparison of "it's time", as long as it's source of time is also synchronized with the constellation?
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Great explanation, but unfortunately the post in the image OC missed the absolute best part, the parody article.
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Nah dog, its gonna be UTC. End of story.
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if anything it should be stardate as the united federation of planets agreed to
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This is the way.
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So, I read something on this a little while ago. It has to do with the moon's weaker gravity making time progress at a different rate, so the lunar time zone gives a precise reference for sub-second (nanosecond I guess?) precision manoeuvres and such like.
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The time dilation on the surface of the moon would cause a clock to be 20 milliseconds ahead of a clock on earth after one year
it might be easier just to synchronize the space station clock with earth once a month, but I guess NASA would go for nanosecond precision if they could
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Sure, we can compromise; they can have their own timezone, but it has a constant time value.
const moonTime = DateTime.Utc.MoonTime-
As in, it is perpetually 4:20 PM on the moon?
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nice.
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To the moon 🚀 🚀 🚀
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That sounds... iffy. Thing is that UTC lags more and more behind TAI as UTC takes the earth's rotation into account, introducing leap seconds so that all the timezones don't slowly drift across the globe. Moon people care preciously little about the earth's rotation around its own axis, more relevant is its own day/night cycle which (because tidal lock) is an earth month. The system might just be stable enough so that UTC can simultaneously sync to that, you'd have to ask an astronomer.
Actually, no, forget it: The moon moves quite fast relatively to the earth's surface, more than enough for relativistic effects to apply -- they also apply to GPS satellites, stuff simply wouldn't work if those things ran on Newtonian maths. Sooner or later it's going to need adjustments due to that.
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Well TAI stands for International Atomic Time and "international" generally pertains to Earth-bound locations.
Coordinated Universal Time sounds like it has a bigger inclusivity scope
Otherwise we'd have to rename TAI to "Intergalactic Atomic Time"
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It's own timezone? It'll need it's own clock. A moon day is about 28 Earth days.
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std::chrono::neutronstar_clock -
How long is a moon year?
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If a year is how long it takes to go around the sun then a Moon year is the same as Earth's
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That may make sense if you're on the surface of the moon, but that's not the case. The moon time zone is for the moon orbiting space station proposed by NASA
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Anyone else keep nearly everything set to UTC?
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In the military that’s all we used. It’s called Zulu time in the Army and it makes for coordinating events in multiple time zones fairly easy. I would assume the moon would be the same since there will 100% be a moon base with military.
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I have response teams in a "follow the sun" model as well as having my US team spread coast to coast, plus all our clients set their servers to UTC. It makes the most sense to keep something set to UTC at a moment's glance.
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The Royal Observatory Greenwich:
"Well, as the first to co-ordinate time we-"
The International Telecommunication Union and International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service in Unison:
"Excuse me, I think you'll find we manage the time."
NIST: "I don't see your footprints up there! We're going off my Omega Speedmaster!"
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Shouldn't it have its own time system? And have its own time zones? You can't give the moon its own single time zone (unless you're into the idea of a single universal time zone).
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That's actually what they're doing. The reporting said timezone when the actual order is more about time standards.
They're creating coordinated lunar time, as a complement to coordinated universal time, so it's a different time system with details about how it relates to UTC.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Celestial-Time-Standardization-Policy.pdf
Timezones on the moon don't serve as much function, because the day/night cycle is closer to a month long, and doesn't map to human rhythms at all. In a hypothetical where we have moon colonies on opposite sides of the moon, there's no reason for them to not still have synchronized day/night, since it already has no relation to the movement of the sun in the lunar sky.
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There's not really a difference between 0 timezones and 1 timezone, let's split it and go with 1/2 timezones
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I say we compromise we will take the moon but they must give up daylight savings. it's only fair.
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Adds moonlight savings
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the fact that the acronym for Coordinated Lunar Time is LTC tells you everything you need to know about how this will work.
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Moon people just have to switch to Universal Moon Time.
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What about Earthmoon Savings Time?
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Shouldn't the moon have… 24 time zones as well, depending where on the moon you currently are?
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No, the moon's rotation isn't on a 24-hour cycle. I'm not an astronomer, but I pretty sure since it's tidally locked to earth and on a 28-day cycle around the earth, a lunar day is actually 28 Earth days, but I'm not actually sure how that would factor into the number of time zones (I'm pretty sure it would be more complicated than just 24 time zones to match 24 time zones on earth, though).
Plus, I think the speed of the moon relative to the sun is different enough from Earth that you need to take relativity into effect, which is the real headache here.
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“An atomic clock on the moon will tick at a different rate than a clock on Earth,” said Kevin Coggins, Nasa’s top communications and navigation official. “It makes sense that when you go to another body, like the moon or Mars, that each one gets its own heartbeat.”
It's possible that they don't end up putting atomic clocks on the moon, but it's on the table, they haven't worked out the details yet.
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24 time zones on earth, though
Even if you just count UTC offsets, there's 38 time zones: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_zone
There's more than that though, due to Daylight Saving Time. The rules for DST are part of the definition of the time zone. For example, in Australia, Queensland and Victoria are both UTC+10. However, Victoria observes DST while Queensland doesn't, so technically they're two separate timezones (in the Olsen database, they're
Australia/MelbourneandAustralia/Brisbanerespectively).
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The moon's day length is so long that it wouldn't make any sense for any crewed mission to use it, they're going to need their own lights on an arbitrary 24 hour cycle anyway, so there's no reason not to have every future crewed mission there use the same one
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Because the moon is tidally locked to the Earth, some things are quite different up there.
The day/night cycle is a lot longer, from sunrise to sunrise is ~28 Earth days. 14 straight days of sunlight, 14 straight days of darkness. Depending on where you are on the surface, you may never be able to see Earth at all, or if you can it remains more or less fixed in the sky; if you really pay attention it slightly wobbles. The waxing and waning of the Earth's disc are in sync with the sun as well, but not necessarily in phase. For example, if you're on the Moon's meridian, New Earth occurs at noon, but if you're to the East or West it will lag or lead. You can just barely make out major surface features of the Earth enough to tell that the Earth rotates, but at a period that has nothing to do with your local conditions.
There wouldn't really be any utility to dividing the Moon into 24 time zones, it wouldn't line up with anything meaningful on Earth or to human circadian rhythms, so for expeditions like the Apollo program or upcoming Artemis flights, you'd just keep an onboard mission clock for the benefit of the crew and rely on artificial lighting and shades to maintain an Earth-like day/night cycle.
It feels to me like this is a problem that doesn't need to be solved yet if ever; I would wait until there are actual people living on the Moon and let them solve the problem in a way that fits their needs, which we cannot fully anticipate from down here on Earth.
I will note that time zones make more sense on Mars than the Moon. Mars has a rapid day/night cycle fairly similar to Earths, a Martian sol is about a half hour longer than an Earth day, fairly easy for humans to adapt to and live la vida loca. Some humans already have; NASA crews working on our various rovers adjust their working days to their rover's local solar conditions. They wear watches calibrated for Martian sols and the wake up and go to bed at a different Earth time every day so that they can work from the rover's sunrise to sunset, when they have light to see and when Spirit and Opportunity had power to move. And because the rovers are scattered across the surface of Mars, their local sunrises and sunsets happen at different times, so we already have de facto time zones on Mars.
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So, there is an actual utility for it, it's just not people centric.
Having a framework for how you convert the clock measurements from the lunar reference frame to terrestrial reference frame is helpful for orbital maneuvering and navigation, as well as communication coordination.They're not building a "UTC+5” style timezone, but a "given the moons mass and orbit, here's how we define the time ratio between the earth and moon so we can consistently calibrate our clocks".
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Can't believe the US is putting trains on the moon before making them viable on Earth
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i agree. the moon should suffer with all of us.
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i still think timezones were a mistake, and that they shouldn't exist period. I have a long thread about this from an earlier post about timezones as well amusingly enough.
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As a social construct, I like that I can be anywhere in the world and know that around noon is probably an appropriate time for lunch, etc.
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Imagine you're watching a movie, and the main character turns over to their bedside clock and it shows 4:13 am. With time zones we all understand what part of the day that is and instinctively can relate to the situation.
Without timezones, every locality would have a different shorthand and cultural understanding of what times mean what. Or they'd adopt a second system that helps transcend that but that's just inventing timezones again...
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I reluctantly agree with you. Though I think the reluctance is just because there's something in me that's viscerally offended by the concept of time itself (probably the ADHD)
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actually, this is pretty funny. This is the ONE instance so far, that i've found where timezones actually do something productive, and it's in a movie.
Too bad movies never use shit like ambient moon lighting, or darkness. It's not like those convey what time of night it is or anything. I mean seriously, if you're bound to showing a clock to display the time, rather than make a point, you're not a very good writer.
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Are you thinking about daylight savings time? I'd agree there, but timezones absolutely make sense, and we've always used some version of it. "See you at noon" has a sort of built in timezone, as does sunrise and sunset. We (all human societies) relate hours to the day in a similar, albeit more regular way. If you did away with timezones, you'd replace a minor inconvenience with a monstrous one. Everyone uses what, GMT? Naah
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DST definitely isn't helping, but in my experience, DST only makes this stuff more arbitrary, between the winter and the summer here where i live, the sunset can vary up to about 4 hours based on season. Time is entirely arbitrary in relation to the sun to begin with. It's a lived experience that many of us have.
And while we do use things like morning, noon, afternoon, evening, night, and midnight. Those are all relative to the local solar time, not the actual time. Sure noon being at 12 is kind of nice i guess. But noon is noon, the time on the clock doesn't change that.
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Time zones are fine. Daylight Savings Time needs to be taken out behind the wood shed and killed with a spoon.
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Username checks out.
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I dont get why everyone is so pissed off about the guy whose name is literally "killingtimeitself" suggesting that we should, kill time itself.
I feel like it should be pretty apparent...
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I think it would be intuitive to people after a while
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it's the less arbitrary version of having timezones, the only difference is that the time doesn't change, because it doesn't it's the solar time that changes.
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No link to the article in the picture?
Also, wouldn't it just be simple enough to make the Moon GMT, and be done with it?
Edit: This comment, that has a link to the actual government PDF, says it better than I.
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wouldn't it just be simple enough to make the Moon GMT
You'd think so, but the problem is that because of gravity, clocks on earth and on the moon will very slowly run out of sync. Idk ask Einstein.
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You’d think so, but the problem is that because of gravity, clocks on earth and on the moon will run out of sync. Idk ask Einstein.
Yeah I'm aware. It would require ongoing recalibrations of the time display units on the Moon.
Then again if they could just pick up the atomic clock signal (WWV, etc.) from Earth, and then add to it for the time it takes for the signal to cross space from the Earth to the Moon, etc.
At the end of the day it's just about having all the homo-sapiens going to bed and waking up at the same time, so they can do business in the same window together.
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Greenwich Moon Time? I'll see myself out....
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Greenwich Moon Time? I’ll see myself out…
Well played, sir/madam. Well, played. /slowclap
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"Forget it Jake, it's Moontown."
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Please end timezones. We only need one universal one and that's it.
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it's called milliseconds since epoch
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Relativity theory enters the chat
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The PR is getting way ahead of rocketry results. It's not helping that Elon is involved.
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Will it follow the lunar calendar?
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Why nyet we've never even been there?
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That's why I prefer TAI time zone
255 comments