Originally published at: Earth's moon is getting its own time zone - Boing Boing
…
6 Likes
gotta wonder if the crufty old (c1986) *nix tz database will be able to be accommodated to this situation…?
moon’s weaker gravity makes clocks tick faster by about 56 microseconds per day.
hm… perhaps not
6 Likes
Sure, it starts with one…
9 Likes
“But the moon’s weaker gravity makes clocks tick faster by about 56 microseconds per day.”
Seems to me then that the frame of reference will need to be terrestrial & not local; all things being equal, GMT might make the most sense as a time standard
6 Likes
No. LCT.
Lunar Cheese Time.
25 Likes
Why would the Moon need its own time zone when we already have Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)?
12 Likes
The Earth is part of the universe too, but that doesn’t stop people here from having different time zones. 
5 Likes
Not to mention all the individuals and even corporations that have their own unique measurements of time, like Miller Time or Clobberin’ Time or Adventure Time.
15 Likes
… if my number number number is correct that’s one negative leap second every 50 years 
4 Likes
I guess that Coordinated Lunar Intersidereal Time was out of the question?
2 Likes
For convenience the lunar time will differ from earthbound time zones by 14.2 minutes, unless daylight savings time is in effect in Australia’s Northern Territory.
8 Likes
9 Likes
That would have been a much funnier crack to make 
5 Likes
Seriously though, there is another time zone that could be used
Just change it from Anywhere on Earth to Anywhere in the Universe. By the time that becomes a problem for us we’ll have moved on to stardates or something.
7 Likes
I work with large-ish scale data [1] related to networks of solar farms. With all the network and data complexity, people are usually surprised when I tell them that my biggest single problem is time stamps and time zones.
[1] A typical data chunk is small enough to fit in a few gigs of memory, and large enough that a spreadsheet is impractical, several times over.
5 Likes
Blame Einstein.
Except the Moon will need its own leap seconds. If the Apollo missions left an atomic clock on the moon, it would already be about one second out of sync with Earth. Which isn’t enough to care about most of the time, but for the times it is we’ll need to keep track of that.
4 Likes
1 Like
i hear that’s much easier there. what with the light gravity and all…
11 Likes
Doesn’t do Daylight Savings Time.
This Sunday we go from 4ish to 7ish time zones on continental Australia.
3 Likes
I remembered there was something wonky but didnt bother to look it up.
1 Like
