The Moon’s own time ticks 57 microseconds faster than Earth’s

Nasa that is, the US space administration is trying to determine what time it is on the moon.

The moon should gradually be assigned its own time zone. Traffic to the Moon has increased. In the past two years, six different probes have attempted to land on the Moon.

In the 2030s, there will be people living on the Moon. The United States and China are seriously aiming there with their space pilots.

Now the calculations show – as expected – that time passes a little faster every moment on the surface of the Moon than on Earth.

Ero is only 57 millionths of a second in an Earth day. However, it may affect navigation on the surface of the Moon.

On Earth, for example, GPS positioning offers precise time with a nanosecond accuracy, he says Cheryl Gramling From NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Gramling is an expert in flight trajectories and navigation. One nanosecond is one billionth of a second.

“If you’re trying to navigate or land on the moon and avoid dangerous areas, this level of accuracy means a lot there, too.”

The white one House Office of Science and Technology Policy therefore gave in the spring An assignment for NASA. It must create its own coordinated time for the Moon by the end of 2026.

That time is now known by the abbreviation LTC.

The problem was tackled by a physicist with his group Slava Turyshev. He works at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.

For starters, they calculated how time ticks on the Moon.

Time ticks faster on the Moon because the Moon’s gravity is only one sixth of Earth’s. It affects time.

It’s because of the time difference Albert Einstein of the default values ​​of general relativity, kertoo New Scientist.

Physicists calculated the passage of time for the Earth and the Moon relative to the center of the solar system. It has a center of mass.

It moves all the time according to how the planets orbiting the Sun are positioned in relation to the Sun.

Accurate ones according to calculations, time on the surface of the Moon ticks 0.0000575 seconds faster per day than on the surface of the Earth.

This information can now be used to synchronize time on the Moon, says Turyshev.

Last February, another study calculated that time passes 56 microseconds faster on the surface of the Moon than on Earth.

The results are therefore very close to each other. This result was calculated based on the orbits of two bodies orbiting the Sun.

Several calculations are also needed. They can be used to create an average of the measured times, and create an accurate common lunar time, LTC, says Nasa’s Gramling.

He believes that there will be only one time zone on the Moon. So the same time would apply at any point on the Moon.

Lunar the International Bureau of Weights and Measures BIPM and the International Astronomical Union IAU participate in the determination of time.

They will have discussions about the upcoming Lunar Universal Time soon, in August.

Other countries, such as China, decide for themselves whether they will follow the time suggested by NASA.

Determining the moon’s own time requires that a start date be set for the time.

From that moment, the clocks start tracking the Moon’s seconds and the Moon’s passage of time compared to the Earth.

It would be ideal if several atomic clocks could be sent to the Moon.