Ok, Imagine it's 500 years into the future.?

Question

We've settled colonies on mars. Mars doesn't rotate the same speed as the earth, nor does one revolution around the sun take the same amount of time? So, How would we measure time on Mars? Only serious answers will get Best Answer.

Answer 1

Because the day on Mars is not precisely locked to the day on Earth, any determination of which day, in a cycle of seven days, is Sunday (or Saturday, or Friday) is intrinsically arbitrary. This will cause a problem for those whose religious beliefs cause them to take such matters very seriously indeed.

That is a problem I can see no obvious way to solve. 40 minutes a day adds up to a whole day in 36 days, so the Martian week would come into step with the Earth week about once every 250 days. The Martian synodic period, the time when Mars, on average, comes into a given relationship with Earth, is about 780 days. So, if the members of one such religious group only travel to Mars roughly at every eighth orbital opportunity, they can observe every seventh day on Mars continuing from the sequence on Earth and both observe every seventh day in their personal lives and be in agreement with the others of the faithful.

Of course, once a week on Mars is well established, any launch opportunity could be used by the simple expedient of switching the ships' clocks from Earth time to Mars time at different times during the voyage depending on the relationship between the Martian week and the Earth week.

What would people on Mars use for months? The Martian moons both have very short periods. Since Phobos orbits Mars three times in a day, even trying to use the recurrence of conjunctions between Phobos and Deimos at a given longitude wouldn't directly produce a cycle longer than Deimos' five and a half day synodic period.

Percival Lowell described dates on Mars relative to the Martian seasons in terms of the Earth calendar, dividing the Martian year into twelve months and those months into "days" as on Earth. This was useful for illustrative purposes, but is obviously not suitable as it stands for timekeeping.

Should the Martian year be divided into twelve, twenty-two, twenty-three, or twenty-four months?

Twelve months, each 55.7 Martian days long on average, would certainly conform well with our habits of dividing the year into seasons. Those months could simply retain the Earth names, and the year could be aligned so that the vernal equinox arrived about March 41st. Except for the longer month, then, dates would correspond to Martian seasons about the same way that they corresponded to Earth seasons on Earth.

Twenty-two months would be 30.4 Martian days long. This would fit well with the Earthly habit of months being usually either 30 or 31 days in length.

Twenty-three months would be about 29 Martian days long each. But they would also be 29.9 Earth days long, whereas with twenty-two months, they would be 31.2 Earth days long. So twenty-three months would give the closest approximation to an Earth month. Since months are an important financial period on Earth, there is something to be said for synchronizing the Martian month with the Earth month.

In that connection, the Gregorian year is 365.2425 days in length, and so the average length of an Earth calendar month is 30.43685 Earth days, or 29.622485 Martian days. So, if one wished to maintain a long-term synchronicity between months on Mars and months on Earth, one could divide the Martian year into 22.57 months; that is, one could have a Martian year with 23 months for four years out of every seven, and with 22 months for the other three years.

Finally, twenty-four months would be 27.9 Martian days long. This would result in a neat and tidy division of the year into twelve equal parts; each one would be composed of two months. One could, for example, have twelve months with the Earthly month names alternating with twelve months named after the Zodiacal constellations, as I believe someone else has suggested. As one of my proposals is aimed at synchronizing the Martian month with the Earth month, one could use the twelve month names from the French Revolutionary calendar along with the Zodiacal constellations to form a pool of 24 month names distinct from those used for the Earthly calendar.

Answer 2

Earth Day: 24 Hours
Martian Day: 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35.2 seconds long.

Like Earth, I would measure a Martian day using a 24 hour period, too. However, a Martian hour would be need to be measured in 60 Martian minutes (or 61.625 Earth Minutes). The two (a Martian hour and an Earth hour) are close enough that humans could get away with using roughly the same time scale without causing much problems.

I would think the simplest way to manage time between the two planets would be to have a watch that told times, both on Earth and Mars. It wouldn't be much different that having a watch that told time in Tokyo and in London.

Or one could go with a metric system for the days, where there would be 10 hours in a day, with each Martian hour lasing 100 minutes. If you went with 10 Martian months, then each month would have approximately 66 (66.5849) Martian days.

I would choose the former and try to keep the Martian day on a 24 hour system.

Answer 3

The best answer, I believe, comes from Robert Zubrin's "The Case For Mars", using signs of the Zodiac for month names on Mars.

Martian days, or "sols", would be recorded one sol at a time, with the calendar starting on January 1, 1961 (Earth time, the year of the first space probes), aka. Gemini 1, I. Since the Martian day is 1.0275 times longer than an Earth day, the concept of seconds would be extended by 1.0275 times the Earthly counterpart.

Months would be recorded based on their position relative to how Mars is positioned between the Sun and the signs of the Zodiac. If one was sitting on the sun and divided the full, 360 degree sky into 12 equal sections based on where the Zodiac constellations were, the Martian month would be named after the current Zodiac position. Since Mars has an oval-like orbit, the months would range between 66 and 46 sols long.

Seasons would continue to be called spring, summer, fall, and winter, and would correspond with the Earthy concept of solstices and equinoxes.The vernal equinox would occur on Gemini 1 of the year; Summer solstice, Virgo 1; Autumnal equinox, Sagittarius 1; and winter solstice, Pices 1.

Years would occur once every Martian revolution, when the planet completes 1 orbit around the Sun. On Mars, each year takes 669 sols, and according to Zubrin's calendar, the years would be written in Roman numerals and start from the Earthly year of 1961.

Answer 4

They might go by UTC, also known as GMT. This is the time shortwave stations use worldwide. Or they'd just figure out Mars time the same way they did for here. But I really doubt we will have colonies on Mars. This planet might not have any people on it in 500 years.

Answer 5

We would, at first, use two time measurements. One for Mars time based upon Mars rotation for scientific use on Mars and one for earth time for communication purposes with earth.

Answer 6

In the sci-fi novel "Return to Mars," the exploration teams use the martian solar day of 24 hours, 39 minutes, 35.2 seconds to mark the passage of one day. They call this martian day a 'sol.' In this context, one martian year would then be 668.6 'sols.' This time system is for those on Mars only. For communications with Earth, they use Greenwich Mean Time for synchronization purposes.

Answer 7

You use the year of the planet you are living on. A day is still a day (one full revolution on its axis), and a year is still a year (one trip around the sun). But, the measurement of time (or any measurement for that matter) is an artificial contruct of humans. So, you do whatever makes sense to that group of people.

Answer 8

I would imagine they would either define a new standard or use millitary time. They would probally define a new time standard based on something that is the same on earth and mars.

Answer 9

You would have Mars time, by using its rotation and orbit.
Unless it was Military, then it might be ZULU time and earth based. That way everything would be on earth standard time for communications and ships comming and going.

Answer 10

The only sensible measures of Year and Day would be the Martian year and the Martian day. I guess you could google that to see how long they are.