You’re probably thinking that it’s about time we get off this subject of time — so here’s one last one for a while….
Coincidentally, this question came up the other day around the time of the full moon — the question was what time is it on the Moon?
We know that here on Earth, our day is divided into 24 hours — based on a complete rotation around the Sun. But in space, things change and we use Coordinated Universal Time (UTC.)
There are many ways to define the “time” at a particular location. Here on Earth our ‘regular’ system (“solar time”) is defined by the motion of the Sun in the sky, although we usually keep track of time with an atomic clock. This means that the local time depends on where you are on Earth and we get around this complication by having many different time zones.
Now, we could also define a similar time system based on the motion of the Sun as seen from the Moon. Such a system exists (Lunar Standard Time) but it turns out to be not much more than an interesting exercise in physics.
There is another time that is more useful — a definition of time that doesn’t vary with location. This is called Universal Time (UT) and is a modern version of Greenwich Mean Time. It is the same everywhere in the Universe. So fundamentally, and ignoring the complications of Einstein’s Special Relativity, it’s the same time on the Moon as it is here on Earth.
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