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 timekeeping 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 timescale 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 based 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 2nd 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 plan it.

So how could a system like this that we already have, and of correlating to Mars, or rather, why even come up with a new system at all if the current one works just fine?

The problem was doing that is that Mars rotates at a rate 2.7% slower than Earth, meaning that the Martian 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 9,192,631,770 vibrational periods of a CCM 133 Adam This obviously still applies on Mars, so seconds air 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.

Ah, full day, when not have passed until the sun is directly overhead again the next day, while on 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 1/60 of a Mars solar, our and a Mars solar.

Our will be one 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 1.5 seconds of Earth time and, um, ours.

Our is actually equivalent to one hour, one 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 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 thes moons are almost nothing like ours.

Phobos, for instance, orbits just 3700 miles above the surface of Mars and whips around it three times every single day and demos.

On the other hand, while it is more distant, it's still only takes 30 hours now.

Unless we wanted to have literally hundreds of months in the year using these moons as a relative references, 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 it 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 11th, 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 there 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 M.

U.

C T M.

U C T 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 is 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 18 30 to be exact and is marked by a crater known as Harry Dash zero, 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 18 84.

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 one 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 one million, This is going to be a monumental task for humankind to pursue.

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