Time

[Spec]

I have a question about time. I've been thinking about this for a while now.

Lets say humans populate a new planet. But that planet takes 36 hours to turn 360 degrees. That means that on that planet, they would have 36 hour days. Also, it could take 3-4-5 years for it to turn around the sun. So the years and hours, as we count them, would be completly different.

My question is, how would it work from planet to planet?

What if you lived on earth all your life, and when your 35, you decide to move to planet-x...In 3 years you'll be 36 or 39? And what about the people who were born on planet-X.

How do you think it would work? And what would be the legal drinking age, drivers liscence and so on?

Spec.

[LordShiva]

Re: Time

Originally posted by Spec
What if you lived on earth all your life, and when your 35, you decide to move to planet-x...In 3 years you'll be 36 or 39?

Neither.

[Spec]

EDIT: 36 or 38 then...

Care to explain?

Spec.

[LordShiva]

You'd be 38.

[Spec]

So on planet-X too?

What if someone is born there. The chances that the planets cycle fits with how we calculate time are very very slim...So to calculate a full rotation, we would need to revise our way of caculating time between both planets for it to work

Spec.

[LordShiva]

You'd be 38 Earth years old, wherever you are.

[Spec]

Originally posted by LordShiva
You'd be 38 Earth years old, wherever you are.

But that cant be....

Earth years would not fit with planet-x years...or hours even more. OnE day, its 4 pm and sunny outside, but the next its completly dark...

sPEC.

[DRoseDARs]

I tend to agree with the notion that within the Human sphere-of-influence, time should be measured primarily on an Earth standard. I see no compelling reason to confuse ourselves. We haven't made contact with other civilizations, so our frame-of-reference here on Earth is the only one that matters.

Speaking of time, it's time for bed.

[Provost Harrison]

Human age is purely measured relative to an earth year. Therefore you would still be 38...in planet X years, you'd be 12 2/3 years old...

[Tattila the Hun]

SOL-years...

[Locutus]

Look at it this way: Earth years and Planet-X years are like miles and kilometers. If you first travel 100 kms in a European car and then 100 miles in an American one, you haven't traveled 200 miles or kilometers, but rather 260 kilometers or 160 miles, whatever measurement you prefer. You can measure age in Earth years or Planet-X years, but not a combination of both, since they are different units.

How old you would consider yourself to be probably depends on whatever system you grew up in, e.g. whether you were born on Earth or on Planet-X. The same is true for different calendar system within Earth: some muslim countries live by the Islamic calendar which is shorter than the Gregorian one so people there consider themselves to be up to a few years older than we would consider them to be if we asked for their date of birth.

[Fake Boris]

Leaving aside relativity considerations (i.e. at what speed do you have to travel to go to Planet X), you'd just measure your age in Earth years, whatever that means to Planet X' revolutions...

[Spec]

Ok, then what about days. TV schedule for example...Lets say a day on planet X last 43.42 earth hours...How would work days work? We still need 8 earth hours of sleep...How would the hours work for a customer service center for example?

That means we would never have the same amount of daylight every"earth"day...depending on when we eat/sleep/live/what we do...

Spec.

[Fake Boris]

Why do you ask? People would just get used to it, perhaps make it a tradition of having a nap in the "afternoon".

[Cort Haus]

When we've figured out how to cope with alien atmospheres, gravity, weather, bio-systems and where the best restaurants are, I'm sure we can knuckle down and decide what time it is going to be.