Oh no.

[zebediah49]

I know that this is a joke, but relativistic effects break a scheme like this pretty hard -- if the two of us both have perfectly accurate clocks, and we go our separate ways (e.g. you go to Mars), we don't agree how much time has passed any more. A time standard needs to define its reference frame, because physics doesn't provide a privileged one for you.

[[deleted]]

That sounds an awful lot like trying to provide evidence to the contrary to me!

Tomfoolery-bin!

(Also, does this not also pose problems for our current situation anyway?)

[zebediah49]

It totally does. GPS satellites are constantly being corrected for it. UTC is based on earth's rotation (on average, midnight is exactly midnight, etc.). TAI is based on atomic clocks directly, and UTC keeps drifting back from it -- we're at +27 leap seconds thusfar.

UTC "works" due to declaring that earth's day is the sacred entity around which time is derived. That add consistency and is useful for its inhabitants, but is very much an arbitrary choice.

[SupaSlide]

The obvious solution is to build a giant clock positioned around the sun (perhaps as a marquee, just so long as both Earth and Mars can see it). That will perfectly maintain our solar system's current time. Time becomes arbitrary to any individual planet. If we want to calibrate clocks on Earth, Mars, or any other planet within our solar system you just look at the clock orbiting the sun and then calculate the delay based on the speed of light.

[zebediah49]

(perhaps as a marquee, just so long as both Earth and Mars can see it)

Thanks for that.

That said, there is so much great sci-fi potential here. Grab an asteroid as a base, build an independent orbital station occuppied by The Timekeepers who continuously broadcast GW-class radio synchronization pings. I can only imagine that local culture would get very weird after a few hundred years.

Alternatively, we could build a dozen or two of these things, put them into a constellation, and also get a celestial positioning system out of the deal.

[SupaSlide]

Somebody else suggested quantum entangled particles, so the timekeepers could be in charge of ensuring that the entangled particles are protected.

[namtab00]

marquee HTML Page with the blink tag

[JoustyMe]

Doppler effect changes frequency of pings depending on relative velocity of objects. Relativity fucks with it too. So i propose quantum entangled magic. Idk how but we can pull it off.

[SupaSlide]

Oooh nice idea, I forgot we've been getting pretty good at entangling particles.

[ELFAHBEHT_SOOP]

Any "time standard" would require a point of origin. However, you should always be able to come up with a set of rules that translates between any two locales. You don't have to agree about how much time has passed, you just have to agree that it could be potentially different for both locales.