How do you tell time if you are floating out in space?

Question

if somehow you could surivie in space and wer floating out of sight of any planets or what not, please suspend disbeleif for a minute, would time as we know it exist?

if you were alone and naked with nothing not even a nice watch would time as we know it exist?

Answer 1

Well, I like your question :-)

I was thinking about a similar topic yesterday... Is time that "absolute"?

And actually, there are phenomenons that evolve according to a time-scale whatever the observer is (radioactive natural desintegration).

There are many human experiments that have been done about chronobiology (living several months under the surface, in a cave).

So, if I were in such a situation living out in space, far away from any usual landmarks, i think i would be aware of time still, but i would have to find new time landmarks.

Simple: i can feel my heart-beat. I know that when i feel calm, i have almost one heart-beat per second.

Of course, it is approximative, but it is better than nothing :-)

And it also permit not to lose my self-awareness & grounding: I think i would deeply need them in such a situation lol.

Answer 2

I suppose you'd have to look at your watch to check the time.
Yes, it would exist, and it would be moving at about the same speed time moves here on earth. Depending on how the measurement system was derived, it would not necessarily be a 24 hour day, with weeks, months and years. It might just be a continual count of seconds, minutes, and hours.

Your heart would beat, you would breathe, etc.

The consequences of time and action would be different. For example, if you were driving your imaginary spacecraft at 100 mph down the highway, you have to worry about a lot of events and objects. The same task in deep space might require only a few decisions per year, rather than one or two per second.

Answer 3

Okay, you suddenly find yourself naked and floating out in space, but not dying from exposure to vacuum or radiation - is that the scenario? Okay, what you do to tell time is grab your wrist and keep count of your heartbeats - that will give you a pretty close measure of the amount of time you spend in that scenario.

Answer 4

I would think if we were able to float around space and survive, we wouldn't care what time it was. You also have to consider that time itself is a measurement system created by humans. In space time has no purpose. Time is only useful for timing events here on earth for humans. Even animals don't measure time.

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Answer 5

Man you have beautiful questions, sure you have a very logical approach to everything.
Ok to answer your question, when you are talking about time, thats absolutely with respect to earth' revolution around the sun, so when you are in space you need to device an alltogether new system of time.

Answer 6

I,m sure if you take a nice watch, you'd have no problem telling time. ps, suspend disbeleif for a minute.

Answer 7

The problem is that time really doesn't exist. Time is an idea it's not physical. It is relative, time changes.