Isn't it Time for Metric Time?

xenocytekron writes: "Sure, our time system is ok, but does it make sense? Is it easy? Think about it: 60 seconds to a minute, 60 minutes to an hour, 25 hours to a day, all the way to 365 days to a year. Currently, all the world uses the Metric System except for the US. But what about Time? The solution is Metric Time, that is, a time system which uses Base-10 and Metric Standards. So what do you think: Is it Time, for Metric Time?"

Comments

Actually, we should at least standardize...

[RobinH]

When I learned "metric" time in school, the idea was there was a set order that everything appeared in: biggest to smallest. Therefore, the time now is 2002 07 04 23:04. That still makes a lot of sense to me, compared with 7/4/02. It always confuses me - which is the month, and which is the day? Just to be sure, I've actually started spelling out the month like this: 4 JUL 2002. That way, there's no doubt.

Re:Divisibility

[cornice]

I agree. The metric system is great being base 10 and all but sometimes I wish we had evolved with 12 fingers just for this reason.

Time be time

[Alpha State]

60 seconds to a minute, 60 minutes to an hour, 25 hours to a day, all the way to 365 days to a year.

Yeah, we should really change it to 100 days per year, that would be much easier. The only time we may need a new time format is if we seriously get into space, and I can't see that happening in my lifetime.

Personally, I'd just be happy if people started writing dates and times in a common format, even if it's the USA's confusing mm/dd/yyyy version.

Re:Funny topic,

[laymil]

The US has already tried to switch to the SI unit system. The previous attempt failed miserably: some people just don't want to switch, some people honestly just don't have the mental capacity to understand the difference between the two systems, and relearning a new system just isn't something that they can do. Also, the costs associated with converting to the SI system would be enormous. Paying to have thousands upon thousands of miles of road remarked with new signs would be prohibitively expensive. I think that since the schools have been teaching the metric system for years now, the deciding factor is in fact the infrastructure that has already been laid down.

Think about it: mile markers, X miles to [town name], speed limits - all of these signs would have to be replaced.

I wouldn't exactly call our units system archaic, its rather simple once you understand the basis - the human body as compared to the basis of the metric system (base 10 and something involving the earths core or some such).

As for the actual posting: if you mean metric as the SI system, 60 second minutes, 60 minute hours, 24 hours days, etc ARE SI time.

Re:Metric natural time

[ImaLamer]

Exactly. Considering the times are based on natural events it should stay that way.

"Well... it's been only one day but my watch says 1.2314. I'm glad we switched to this new version of time!"

Don't go screwing with a good thing. The time system we have now is somewhat an average of what ancient astronomy has come up with... it's worked pretty good so far.

Re:and the other measurements?

[RedWizzard]

Is there another number system besides base 6 that allows you to easily convert the earth's rotation of 15 degrees an hour into human readable time?

That's circular reasoning. You're arguing that "hour" is a good measure of time based on rotation per hour. Since there is nothing magical about 15 degrees we could easily define a "metric hour" to be a tenth of a day and say the earth's rotation is 36 degrees per "metric hour".

24.2 Hours!

[DzugZug]

Actually I work in a lab studying circadian rhythms. The human cycle is about 24.3 hours. For rats its 23.7 or so. Keep in mind that this is only the frequency of the oscillations in the SCN (a brain region responsible for that sort of thing) and that a human's (or any mammals's) cycle is entrained to the environment. People normally exist in a 24 hour LD (light/dark) clycle and we entrain to whatever LD cycle we happen to be in. Otherwise you would never get over jetlag.

In spaceflight we have a .75:.75 LD cycle (i.e., 45 min. of light followed by 45 min. of dark) and weightlessness. The circadian oscillators are screwed up by this and thus the period retards to approx. 25 hours.

Altering our time system wont change our LD cycle. So unless we want to slow down the Earth's rotation by about 0.8%, we just need to live with it.

BTW, the study that was mentioned before is Alpatov, AM.Circadian rhythms in a long-term duration space flight. Adv Space Res 1992;12(1):249-52. I have included the abstract below:

Institute of Biomedical Problems, Moscow, USSR.

In order to maintain cosmonaut health and performance, it is important for the work-rest schedule to follow human circadian rhythms (CR). What happens with CR in space flight? Investigations of CR in mammals revealed, that the circadian phase in flight is less stable, probably due to a displacement of the range of entrainment, resulting from internal period change (the latter was confirmed on insects). The circadian period may be a gravity-dependent parameter. If so, the basic biological requirement for the day length might be different in weightlessness. On this basis, a higher risk of desynchronosis is expected in a long-duration space flight. As a countermeasure, a non-24-hr day length could be suggested, being close to the internal circadian period (in humans about 25 hr). Taking into account a possible displacement of period in weightlessness, it seems reasonable to establish a flexible work-rest schedule, capable to follow the body temperature CR by means of biofeedback.