🖖 It's Lunar time!

That’s right. After years of discussion, NASA will put into place:

Coordinated Lunar Time.

They just gotta figure out how.

You’re probably thinking, “What’s the big deal?”

Time is time.

Easier said than done.

Time isn’t the same for everyone. Time and space and gravity have a strange relationship.

In Einstein’s special theory of relativity, there’s a concept called time dilation.

Now without getting into the math it states that the faster you travel through space, the slower you travel in time.

Same goes for gravity. The stronger the gravitational pull, the slower time ticks.

Remember Miller’s planet on Interstellar? One hour was 7 years on earth.

Time dilation.

Now at the speeds and distances we humans are used to, the difference isn’t too much.

But the moon does have a weaker gravity and is traveling through space faster than earth.

Get two clocks from the store, and take one to the moon. The one on the moon will gain about 58.7 microseconds for every 24 earth hours.

That’s not a lot. That’s this much: 0.0000587 seconds.

But it adds up.

The clock is running

The US White House is giving NASA until 2026 to figure out the ins-and-outs of the lunar time zone.

It’s going to improve communication with spacecraft and habitats on the moon.

A lunar time zone is also needed for lunar internet geo positioning system (GPS) satellites.

And that’s the cool part- we won’t just be matching lunar time with a time zone on earth’s surface. The moon will have its own heartbeat.

Its clock will tick at its own rate.

I wonder if we’ll call minutes and hours different things altogether.

There are a few other wrinkles to iron out.

But all-in-all we’re another step closer to a future we’ve only read about in books.

And that is exciting.

Which is why I shared this with you.