MersenneForum solves the word time keeping problem.

[M344587487]

Originally Posted by rudy235

That would work only in a regular year. We would still need to correct for the 0.2422 extra days per year. so we would hat to at the very least we would have an extra day 97 times (calendars) every 400 years. So it could be more complicated. (The extra days)

For the linked description, roughly every 4 years there would be a second "year day" in the same way there are leap years now.


At the very least I think we can all agree that daylight savings was a mistake?

[retina]

Originally Posted by xilman

Nonetheless, which day and year (and month if you wish) do you choose here and now for use by residents of the Earth? Why do you not choose the others?

I choose the day that matches my body processes, and the year that matches the needs of the crops. Which happen to be approximately 86400 seconds, and 365 days respectively on Earth. If I was adapted to live on Mars I might choose different values for each of those.

But none of this has anything to do with the length of the second. It can still be something else. It doesn't affect the day or year on any planet.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by retina

I choose the day that matches my body processes, and the year that matches the needs of the crops. Which happen to be approximately 86400 seconds, and 365 days respectively on Earth.

Am I allowed to choose the day which matches my bodily processes or am I forced to use yours?

A number of experiments have shown that the "natural" diurnal rhythm of Homo sapiens is (a) variable between individuals and between members of a population and (b) greater than 86.4ks on average.

[retina]

Originally Posted by xilman

Am I allowed to choose the day which matches my bodily processes or am I forced to use yours?

Sure. choose whatever you want. However on Earth, unless you live in some sealed/closed/controlled environment you might have trouble trying to make your day length significantly different from the usual average 86400 seconds. Go for it. Let us know how you get on. How much different do you think you can shrink/extend it to?

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by retina

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That is why we have leap seconds and leap years. We will always need those no matter what fixed time period we choose for the second.

Actually, "leap seconds" are due to something else.

Before 1967 the second was defined as a stated fraction of the "tropical year 1900." The definition was basically that a second was 1/86400 of a "mean solar day."

However, due to tidal friction, the earth's rotation on its axis is slowing down (and the moon's orbit is receding farther away). In the century or so since the "ephemeris second" was defined, the earth's rotation has slowed down by approximately two milliseconds per day -- the "solar day clock" as recorded by the earth's rotation is "running slow" compared to 1900, and so every now and then "leap seconds" have to be added to keep clock time in synch with time-of-day as observed on earth.

[chalsall]

Originally Posted by retina

... you might have trouble trying to make your day length significantly different from the usual average 86400 seconds. Go for it. Let us know how you get on. How much different do you think you can shrink/extend it to?

To be perfectly honest, I do this, myself, relatively often.

Back when my body and brain could tolerate it, I would quite regularly do 36 hour days. Like for weeks or months at a time.

It took patient and tolerant business partners, but every two of my days would be three of theirs. Meetings could be scheduled thusly.

I'm not joking about this.

Edit: Oh, to be clear, I'm talking Earth harmonics for the frame of reference. My home planet is actually a Dyson Sphere; we don't have night...

[jwaltos]

wow

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by chalsall

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Back when my body and brain could tolerate it, I would quite regularly do 36 hour days. Like for weeks or months at a time.
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Reminds me of something in an SF story I read many moons ago...

He turned into a scientific byway and ran down his other great triumph - accelerated metabolism. He extracted and refined the stimulating factors in alcohol, cocoa, heroin, and Mother Nature's prize dope runner, Cannabis indica. Like the scientist who, in analyzing the various clotting agents for blood treatments, found that oxalic acid and oxalic acid alone was the active factor, Kidder isolated the accelerators and decelerators, the stimulants and soporifics, in every substance that ever undermined a man's morality and/or caused a "noble experiment." In the process he found one thing he needed badly - a colorless elixir that made sleep the unnecessary and avoidable waster of time it should be. Then and there he went on a twenty-four-hour shift.

-- Microcosmic God by Theodore Sturgeon