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real life floor of all the planets in
our solar system
mars is the one that appears to be the
most habitable
relatively speaking it's not too cold
it's not too hot and there's even a day
and night cycle that is actually quite
similar to our own
which means the time keeping on mars is
actually somewhat close to what it is on
earth but in many ways
it's also starkly different and that's a
problem that astronauts and colonists in
the near future are going to have to
face
the question is how exactly close
is the martian time scale to earth's and
will astronauts visiting mars in the
near future
be forced into a completely new
dimension of time
perhaps first it's important to discuss
briefly what time
even is at all time when you think about
it is sort of a strange concept
in its most basic form time is
essentially just the progress of
existence that appears to occur
in an irreversible succession from past
to present
and on into the future while the most
widely used numeral system on earth is
the decimal or base 10 system
a system that most likely originated
because it was easy for humans to count
using all 10 of their fingers
ancient civilizations such as the
egyptians and the greeks
first divided the day into smaller parts
based on a base 12 and base 60 system
that we continue
to use to this day the base 12 system
coming from the fact that there are
roughly 12 hours of daylight
and 12 hours of darkness during each
observed equinox
and 60 originating from well i don't
really know but it does divide pretty
nicely with smaller numbers such as 10
12 15 20 and 30 which may be why it was
originally chosen but all of this aside
what we eventually agreed upon was the
fact that 24
hours did occur in a day which is
comprised of 60 minutes in each of those
hours and 60 seconds within each of
those minutes
except of course for the occasional leap
second which occasionally turns the last
minute of the year
into a 61 second minute the problem that
no
ancient timekeepers ever thought about
though is how would this system work
among humans living on
another planet the system we all know of
24 hours in a day and 60 minutes per
hour is specific to our current planet
so
how could a system like this that we
already have end up correlating to mars
or rather why even come up with a new
system at all if the current one works
just fine
the problem with doing that is that mars
rotates at a rate
2.7 percent slower than earth meaning
that the margin day
is actually somewhat longer but before
jumping to the full day
let's begin with the smaller unit of
time the second
a second is really just a human
perceived derivative of a larger time
and as a result would be the exact same
on mars as it is on earth
in fact the precise measurement of a
second is known as the atomic second
which is exactly measured as
nine billion one hundred ninety two
million six hundred thirty one thousand
hundred 770 vibrational periods of a ccm
133 atom
this obviously still applies on mars so
seconds are good
but next up is where things begin to get
a little more complicated before moving
on to what a minute is it is first
important to understand
what exactly a day on mars is like and
to do that
we need to understand what exactly a day
is
a day on any planet is the time it takes
for the planet to rotate once on its
axis
relative to the sun that is if you stand
at one location and begin the day with
the sun
overhead a full day would not have
passed until the sun is directly
overhead again
the next day while an earth day is
roughly 24 hours
or specifically 23 hours and 57 minutes
to be exact
a martian day also known as a soul is
exactly
24 hours 39 minutes and 35 seconds long
in earth time now going back to what a
mars minute is
a mars solar minute will be 1 60th of a
mars solar hour
and a mars solar hour will be 1 24th of
a mars day
so after doing some quick math we can
determine that a mars minute is
actually equal to one minute and one and
a half seconds of earth time
and a mars hour is actually equivalent
to 1 hour
1 minute and 39 seconds on earth who
wouldn't want to have a little extra
time in the day after all
now the next unit of time to define
after the day would be the month
on earth we use the moon to define this
length of time as it takes 29 and a half
days to complete the lunar cycle
which conveniently breaks the year down
into roughly 12
equal parts however on mars it's not
quite that easy
mars actually has two moons phobos and
deimos
and these moons are almost nothing like
ours
phobos for instance orbits just 3 700
miles above the surface of mars and
whips around it three times every single
day
and damos on the other hand while it is
more distant it still only takes 30
hours
now unless we wanted to have literally
hundreds of months in the year
using these moons as a relative
reference is just not going to be
practical
and therefore it was determined that it
would be best to just divide the martian
year into 12 equal parts pretty much
just like we do on earth
thus granting a relationship between the
mars month and the earth month to be
much closer together
but what really starts to get crazy
however is when we add up these months
and begin to compare
the earth year to the mars year in its
entirety in astronomical terms
a year is the time it takes for a planet
to make one trip around the sun
while the earth takes roughly 365.25
days to make this journey
hence the leap year every four years the
mars year is nearly
double that time at 687 earth days were
converted to mars days
669 but what really makes a difference
in the time on earth versus the time on
mars is the actual
orbit you see for the most part the
earth rotates around the sun
in a nearly perfect circle now of course
it is technically
not an exact circle but it is relatively
close
meaning that no matter what time of year
it is the distance between the earth
and the sun remains much the same and
thus has no effect on temperature
instead the seasons on earth change
primarily from the relative tilt of the
earth in reference to the sun
however mars has what is known as an
eccentric orbit meaning that during some
months it is much closer to the sun
while for others
it is much much further and while this
may not seem like a huge deal
it is going to make for some rather long
and brutally cold winters
so with all of this being said what time
even is it on mars
right now and does mars even have an
exact date well
actually yeah for the purposes of
enumerating mars years and facilitating
date comparisons
a system has already been developed by
the space science institute to perform
this duty
this system although not officially
adopted yet is becoming increasingly
used especially by recent mars
exploration rovers
it suggests that mars year one occurred
on april 11
1955 earth time at the point of the
northern spring equinox
shortly before the great martian dust
storm of 1956 which was observed by
astronomers here on earth
thus for reference as we celebrate the
new year here on earth on january 1st
2021 mars will be nearing the end of
year 35
with new year 36 finally occurring here
on earth on february 8
2021 as humanity continues to reach
further and further out into the solar
system and beyond it will become
necessary to adopt new ways of telling
time
just like on mars while early mars rover
missions used a rather primitive time
system where they would literally just
pause their clocks at midnight for 39
minutes in order to account for the time
difference
more recent rover missions have begun to
use what is increasingly becoming known
as
mars universal coordinated time or muct
muct is very similar in nature to how
universal coordinated time or utc
works on earth it is defined as the main
solar time at mars prime meridian
much like how earth has a prime meridian
marking for which universal coordinated
time is based off of
mars has a meridian that was first
proposed way back in 1830 to be exact
and is marked by a crater known as
airy-0 which is sort of funny because
this was essentially
50 years before the prime meridian was
established and agreed upon on earth at
the international meridian conference
back in 1884.
now all of these problems with keeping
track of time on mars might not matter
so much
now but they'll be of dramatic
importance later on throughout the
course of the 21st century
elon musk announced earlier this year
that he plans on having
1 million people living on mars by 2050
that's only 30 years from now and just
halfway through the century
if he's right about that estimate then
the odds are good that
most of you watching this video are
going to be alive when the human
population of mars
is 1 million this is going to be a
monumental
task for humankind to pursue and the
problems with time
math physics and more are numerous
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