On 11 Jan 2006 at 0:08, Tim Shepard wrote:
> If humans spread out to other places besides the earth, an
> earth-centric time scale might begin to seem somewhat quaint.
> Distributing leap second information to a Mars colony seems kind of
> silly.
As I recall, the NASA Mars missions are using Mars-centric time
scales, which include a "Martian second" that has a different length
from the SI second in order for the different-length Martian day
(called a "Sol") to be subdivided into a familiar 24 "hours" composed
of 60 "minutes" each with 60 "seconds".
If, however, this Martian second is actually defined as a particular
multiple of the SI second, then the use of leap seconds on Mars would
ultimately be necessary to account for any future changes in the
length of the Martian day.
--
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Received on Wed Jan 11 2006 - 06:01:28 PST