On 2024-07-11 04:33, Brooks Harris via tz wrote:
On 2024-07-11 06:07 AM, Paul Eggert wrote:
On 7/11/24 03:44, Brooks Harris wrote:
On 2023-03-02 04:47 PM, Paul Eggert wrote:
Presumably ESA's boffins are on top of this.....
Researchers more precisely calculate how much faster time passes on the moon https://phys.org/news/2024-07-precisely-faster-moon.html
That news article says "the team found that time on the moon ticks by at 0.0000575 seconds faster per day (57.50 µs/d) than it does on Earth."
But the paper <https://arxiv.org/pdf/2406.16147> says this figure needs to be adjusted for the total orbital energies for the Earth and Moon, and later gives an adjusted figure of "56.02 μs/d, with the clock on the Moon’s surface running faster by that amount compared to a terrestrial clock. Additionally, there are periodic terms, the largest of which is due to the lunar orbit around the Earth that amounts to about 30.95 μs/d ...".
Clearly precise lunar timekeeping will not be a trivial matter.
It's still not clear to me what the relationship between the ESA and NASA is on this. Will there be a single standard for lunar timekeeping, or multiple standards? Will this be like the squabbles over the Prime Median in the 19th century?
Is there a Prime Meridian on the Moon? Will there be Lunar Time Zones?
I'd imagine that meridian would have to be the mean line separating the Earth facing near side and the far side? As the lunar terminator rotates giving us phases, I'd expect we would have to deal with divisions having a mean totalling ~29.5 days, but a bit like Earth polar latitudes, with day and night each taking ~14.75 days. I would expect time zones might operate as in Antarctic bases, keeping the zone of the associated organization for human wake-sleep cycles. -- Take care. Thanks, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada La perfection est atteinte Perfection is achieved non pas lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à ajouter not when there is no more to add mais lorsqu'il n'y a plus rien à retirer but when there is no more to cut -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry