this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2024
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Makes you realize how UTC is not really universal but bound to the earth.
Of course. But there is no reason Lunar time couldn’t be kept as UTC.
It all has to do with how we perceive time and humans are notoriously bad at it (most people seem to hate the idea that 12pm could mean middle of the night…they must have 12pm equal to sun high in the sky).
For the moon, though, the only issue would be with how UTC is calculated on the surface of Earth, which will have a time offset to play in with respect to the moon, in order to keep in sync with Earth-UTC (similar to how electronic satellites like GPS have to calculate).
You could but you would need to redefine the second, no? I mean time runs slower on the Earth than the moon, so yes you could synchronise the moon to UTC but then one second of UTC goes by on the Earth but 1.0...01 second actually goes by on the Moon.
Unless you kept syncing up your clock, you'd soon find that Earth's 13:42 is actually your 13:43.
Yes, I said this in my post. Satellites do it, there’s no reason it can’t be done on the moon as well to keep in sync with Earth UTC. It’s math and physics — a problem that has already been solved.