A new study from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, has revealed how time flows on Mars, and exactly how out of sync it is compared to our flow of time here on Earth.
According to NIST researchers, who published their findings in The Astronomical Journal, an atomic clock on Mars would run 477 microseconds faster per day than one on Earth. Good info that will certainly help space agencies and future Mars colonists, but there is a catch: that time isn’t static. Depending on where Mars is in its orbit around the sun, the daily difference in time can swing by as much as 226 microseconds.
It sounds minor, and it is in a vacuum, but it is a major pain to have to account for when you rely on absolute precision timing for a wide variety of scientific purposes. As for why it’s happening, it’s because Mars doesn’t neatly orbit around the sun as much as it kind of meanders around.
Its own gravity, the sun’s influence, the Earth’s pole on Mars, and even our Moon’s teeny tiny gravitational influence all come together to tug Mars out of a neat and tidy orbit, thus throwing off its flow of time just enough to be annoying.
This is a classic three-body problem, according to NIST physicist Bijunath Patla in a statement released on the NIST website. When multiple celestial bodies are influencing the orbit flows and gravitational pushes and pulls of a planet like Mars, a variety of factors become much more difficult to account for and predict.
“A three-body problem is extremely complicated,” NIST physicist Bijunath Patla said. “Now we’re dealing with four.” Translation: the math was a nightmare.
The NIST team dug into the bevy of factors influencing the flow of time on Mars to figure out how to keep clocks synced between it and Earth, since we might one day need a navigation system as precise as GPS on Earth. To do that, we’re going to need extremely precise clocks that are in sync with our own back home. You have to understand how time bends on a different planet before you can even begin thinking of living on it and keeping in contact with a totally different planet.
All this also has a slightly disconcerting implication: you age faster on Mars. Though the difference is rather small. Fifty years of Mars living will make you a whole nine seconds older than if you had stayed on Earth. These aren’t Interstellar levels of time dilation, but fun and a tiny bit eerie.
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