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Living on Mars Time
Roland Piquepaille writes "When NASA's rovers, 'Spirit' and 'Opportunity,' touch down on Mars next January, scientists and engineers in charge of the missions at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), will start to experiment with a 90-day period of jet lag. Why? Because, as reports Astrobiology Magazine, 'a day on Mars is 39.5 minutes longer than a day on Earth.' To accommodate the requirements of interplanetary communication, during the mission the Spirit science and engineering teams will have to live on Mars time, in synch with the red planet's cycle of light and dark. This means that, here on Earth, they'll sometimes be working during daylight hours, and at other times they'll be working through the night. This summary contains more details and a screenshot of the Mars24 application, a Java program which gives you the time on Mars."
I once heard that, in test, the human body operates on a 25 hour cycle anyway, and we 'reset' our internal clocks ever day to fit in with the 24 hours of a day.
IIRC, tests were carried out where volunteers lived underground with no access to the outside world - no TV, windows, etc. They could call up to the surface to request books, games, food, but nothing that would allow them to work out any sence of time (no clocks either!). It was found that they reverted to a 25 hour day...
Shouldn't be too difficult for the scientists, or for colonization...