Do scientist use other names for the days, weeks and months of the year on other planets besides the ones we use on earth. ex. since mercury's year is about 88 earth days, do they use different names for months on mercury?
2006-09-16 12:46:00 · 8 answers · asked by breeze1 4 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
Months are a concept that only arise if a planet has a moon (the etymology of the word "month" comes from the word "moon" for those who don't know) and Mercury doesn't, So if it is to have some sort of sub-divisions of its 88-Earth-days "year", they cannot be based on the time its moon takes to complete one orbit around Mercury.
More of a problem, I would have thought. is some sort of sub-divisions into "hours" and "minutes" of the Mercurian 56-Earth days "day",
Venus would have the same problem. No moon, and in its case its "day" is longer than its "year" so its "hours" could well be longer than its "months"! Bend your mind around that one!
Mars would have a different problem, It has two moons. Deimos has a revolution period of 1.262 earth days. Phobos, the innermost moon, needs only 0.318 earth days (7 hours 39 minutes) to complete an orbit of Mars. So apart from which moon do you use to define the month, you have the problem that a Martian year of 1.88 Earth years or 687 Earth days would then be subdivided into either 544.37 Deimian months or 2,160.37 Phobian months.
Either way. a neat division of a year subdivided into months, subdivided into days does not look easily acheived as the Martian day of 24.62 Earth hours would be about 3 Phobian months or about five-sixths of a Deimian month, You would be asking "how many months are there in a day?" omstead of the other way around!
Then we come to Jupiter with 63 moons and of course the sun would look a lot smaller there as Jupiter is 5 AU away from the sun and the area of the Sun's disk as seen from Jupiter would only be 4% (one twenty-fifth) of its disk as seen from earth, such that even the smaller moons could cause a total solar eclipse, especially if in orbits close to the Jovian surface. And the bigger moons would blot it out for some time.
So it is entirely possible that a 10 Earth hour Jovian day (5 hours nightime and 5 hours daytime) would suffer several solar eclipses in the course of a Jovian day and the animals lying down in the fields (if there were any!) would get totally confused as to when it was dark because it was nighttime anf when it was dark because it was yet another eclipse, And when to go tro sleep therefore, Not that the reflected light of 63 moons would make sleep easy.
So even intervals between one darkened-sky event and the next would be hard to come by. snd the whole idea of proceeding by analogy with earth would be even more suspect thsn in the first three cases,
2006-09-16 13:21:24 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 1⤋
365 has the uninviting nature of only being evenly divisible by 1 and 5, for numbers less than 12. I think the 7 day week probably has it's origins in the book of Genesis, but why it is still accepted today as a world-wide recognition even in places where the Old Testament is not recognized as anything other than a paperweight, I'm not sure. Perhaps there is an astronomical association, though. The moon takes roughly 7 days to go from New to First Quarter. Roughly 7 more to go from First Quarter to Full. ...7ish from Full to Third Quarter (and so on). Perhaps this had something to do with it? I don't know, I'm being highly speculative here. But perhaps it was a way to try to divide up the lunar month somewhat evenly.
2016-03-27 04:31:31 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
On Mars the days are called Sols. Nothing changes for the terminology of months or years. However, every planet/moon has a different length of time for days, months, and years.
A day on a planet or moon is the length of time it takes for it to make a complete revolution around its axis. (Some moons and planets are tidaly locked so this won't apply for them).
A year is the time it takes for the planet to make a complete circle around its parent star.
A month is just a year broken down into even (or evenish) increments, the Roman calendar used 12, so I imagine this will be the standard we use as we colonize other planets.
Oh - and months have NOTHING to do with the planet having a moon or not. LOL
2006-09-16 14:10:10 · answer #3 · answered by T F 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Hi. On Mars they use a different name for days. I'll let you look it up. Hint: Search for Rover.
2006-09-16 12:48:06 · answer #4 · answered by Cirric 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Yep
2006-09-16 20:13:10 · answer #5 · answered by matthewoborne 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
It's probably best to let the inhabitants of those planets name their own days and months, n'est ce pas?
2006-09-16 12:50:06 · answer #6 · answered by alchemist0750 4 · 0⤊ 1⤋
you are right
2006-09-17 02:15:54 · answer #7 · answered by david w 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
You should ask a mercurian girl ...... ;)
2006-09-16 13:29:36 · answer #8 · answered by shady 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋