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Adjusting To a Martian Day More Difficult Than Expected
schwit1 writes: Research and actual experience have found that adjusting to the slightly longer Martian day is not as easy as you would think. "If you're on Mars, or at least work by a Mars clock, you have to figure out how to put up with the exhausting challenge of those extra 40 minutes. To be exact, the Martian day is 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35 seconds long, a length of day that doesn't coincide with the human body's natural rhythms. Scientists, Mars rover drivers, and everyone else in the space community call the Martian day a "sol" to differentiate it from an Earth day. While it doesn't seem like a big difference, that extra time adds up pretty quickly. It's like heading west by two time zones every three days. Call it 'rocket lag.'"
...and keep all the lighting on a 24 hour cycle. All the drawings I see of colonies on the moon or Mars all have buildings on the surface. Don't they both have cave systems? Just seal those off and who cares about the outside climate/seasons?
Seriously - people aren't as fragile as TFA surmises. In the spelunking world, cavers have discovered that after a few weeks without a day/night reference, their circadian cycles stretched out to a 24/24 cycle. In the case of a newly-minted Martian, it won't go that extreme, which means that at least within the timeframe of an exploratory journey, it would be no big deal, and they can adjust between the two on the way there and back (there's plenty of time on the journey to do that.)
Long term is a bit more difficult to predict, but only in how it affects the body overall. It would certainly adjust and stay adjusted, but I can guess (with no evidence either way) that the effect would be no different than Daylight Savings Time cycles would have on the typical adult here on Earth.
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Living on Mars time is difficult when you're living on Earth and are subject to Earth's day/night cycle.
Sensory deprivation experiments where people live without clocks and daylight for more than a few days show that people tend to lengthen their "day" to much more than a Mars sol (up to 36 hours IIRC), indicating that adjusting to Mars time is feasible when you're actually on Mars.
The twins keep us on Centaurian time, standard thirty-seven hour day. Give it a few months. You'll get used to it... or you'll have a psychotic episode.
40 minutes of extra sleep is hard to adjust to? If we can adjust to seasonal variations in sunlight I think we can adjust to 40 minutes. Admit it, you're doing it wrong.
How is an extra 40 minutes two timezones? It should be less than one.
These people were trying to adjust to a martian day while still living on earth and seeing the sun still operate on a 24 hour day, so of course they're going to have problems. I'd like to see this tried while keeping the people underground with the lights cycling to actually simulate a martian day.
I spent decades in production, both on and off the road. My sleep schedule literally got to the point where there was no point in the 24 hour clock where I was more likely to be awake (maybe 8pm). For a few years I slept in two shifts. It's a little weird having your day clock stripped but the only difference I noticed going back to genuinely normal take-the-kids-to-school sleep patterns was I now need less sleep.
I doubt this would be a real problem. The lack of air? Cooped up with the same few people for the rest of your life? Martian rations? There are some issues. I guess most could be solved by consistent Netflix streaming.
40 extra minutes of sleep each morning? Yes, please!
He had no problem on Mars... except for the kaboom!
"Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!"
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the Martian day is 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35 seconds long, a length of day that doesn't coincide with the human body's natural rhythms
I never really had these "natural rhythms". Or at least I'm not as sensitive to it as most people are. I get tired if I'm up for more than 48 hours or so, but I really never had an issue working different shifts when I was younger, and don't have an issue with changing time zones now. The last time I traveled to the EU with some coworkers, they were acclimated to the time difference after a week. They all complained about waking up in the middle of the night. I arrived in the afternoon and went to bed around 9 in the evening and slept great and was perfectly adjusted the next morning.
Even so, I have zero interest in going to Mars. But I can't imagine that there aren't people like me that would be willing to go.
it obstructs my view of Venus.
when you're trying to pretend you're in both places at the same time.
Your trying to say its hard to adjust to the Martian day ... while still living on Earth and being adjusted to the Earth day.
Thats fucking retarded to say the least. 40 minutes isn't that big of an issue any more than changing a SINGLE timezone is ... when you aren't still trying to stay on the old schedule as well.
Rover drivers have the problem of living on Earth, working on Mars ... THATs the problem, not the actual extra 40 minutes.
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Guess I should volunteer for a mission to Mars. My circadian rhythms seem to run close to 25 hours. I usually have trouble falling asleep before an hour after I fell asleep the previous night.
Yes, this a bit of a pain when having a job that doesn't allow me to start work an hour later each day.
40min extra sleep every day. I wish I had that on earth. Sign me up for a one way.
This sounds like absolute garbage, people naturally vary their daily schedule by more than 40 minutes (go to sleep a bit early, wake up a bit late, etc). Our bodies don't have some built in chronometer that adheres to a 24 hour clock, its based on our sleep schedule. While it might be a tad more exhausting being awake an extra 40 minutes a day should have no appreciable impact on a normal human.
Obviously anyone used to an Earth day will have problems coping. If we ever colonize Mars, the first generation immigrants will have it rough, but their children will find it perfectly natural.
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I'm going to have to re-release my biorhythms app just because of their stupid 40 minute extra long days.
Why can't they just slow Mars' rotation down to to 24 hours????
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It's not the length of a day that will impact Mars-dwellers the most, it will be their internet speed.
I would of thought that adjusting to the very thin atmosphere with virtually no oxygen would be the biggest problem for humans, then the cold temperatures, and maybe the 1/3 G
The long days, not so much. But then I work night shift.
And it does not hurt them (us, I did it for a few years myself) at all. By current law you can only operate for 14 hours a day, then take 10 hours off. This means your day is constantly shifting about an hour longer every day. 14 hours working and driving, then an hour or two working on paperwork and inspecting your truck. Then the mandatory 10 hours rest. A 25 or 26 hour day cycle is perfectly normal and you adjust easily.
Let's fix it on Earth fist, and stop fucking with our circadian cycles twice a year!
When the planet is bombarded with comets as part of the terra forming effort, a judicious selection of impact angles will easily speed the rotation to a nominal 24 hour rate
He dead.
Just like on Star Trek. When you're in deep space you just set a 24 hour clock and go with it. Why do you have to observe the Martian day at all?
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Rocket Lag
Burnin' out his fuse up here alone
For some reason, many people have gravitated to a single sleep session per day.
It may be more beneficial to have a spit sleep session, even on earth. Some research indicates that segmented sleep used to be common practice around the world.
Compare these different cycles:
Day cycle
(A) 17 hour wake, 7 hour sleep
(B) 16 hour wake, 4 hour sleep, 1 hour wake, 3 hour sleep
Sol cycle
(A) 17 hour 28 minute wake, 7 hour 12 min sleep
(B) 16 hour 16 minute wake, 4 hour 6 minute sleep, 1 hour 12 minute wake, 3 hour 6 minute sleep
Adjusting from B Day to B Sol might be much easier that A Day to A Sol.
In a few years the length of an Earth day will increase to catch up to the length of a Mars day: http://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/10004/when-will-a-day-on-earth-mars-be-the-same-length
To me it sounds like everybody can just get an extra 40 minutes of sleep each day. What is wrong with that!
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An injury once kept me from working for 3 months. I tended to say up an extra hour every day and sleep in an extra hour as well. I went through three 24 hour cycles before returning to work. This was some very productive time for me. I was able to code and was never tired.
Up 'til 2AM, wake at 9AM. Up 'til 11PM, wake at 8AM. What's the big deal?
Personally my schedule rotates forward about 2 hours a day and I find it really difficult to keep to a 24 hour schedule (in fact I haven't been able to do so for more than a couple weeks my whole life). I'm essentially on a 26 hour day. I'm sure there are plenty of others with the same issues but more inline with Mars.
to adjust to? No oxygen, -30C temperature, darkness, and no magnetosphere.
oops.
But no worries; Elon Musk will fix all!
It's only slightly better than living in a giant spinning space station... or in a bomb shelter right here.
Anything you can do on mars, robots can do better. already.
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We Non-24-hour sleep wake syndrome humans were ment to live on mars I guess...
Seriously, look it up, about 1 hour later every day sleep cycle.
I would just use the "extra" time to sleep. They would have a bit of time getting to mars, seems enough time to adjust while in transit.
WTF. We're not even sure humans can live long term with 1/3g and they worry about a 40min longer day. Why not worry about the taste of tasty wheat on mars while you're at it.
And btw there are several studies, with wildy differnt sleep patterns which show no real negative side effects.
Id get up bed 1hour later!
We've spent millions of years evolving in an environment with roughly the same daily periodicity (+- a few seconds.)
Is it really shocking that we can't easily just readjust our internal clock?
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But I found my hometown waiting for me on Mars, so I just slept it off in my old room from when I was a kid.
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if we were to calibrate our watches so that the extra 39 minutes is distributed across those 24 hours, that would add about 1 minute 38 seconds to each hour. Since we already watch the time religiously, we wouldn't notice it much over the course of each hour. Also, since the observation of time is so relative the change would be nominal.
Or, it would be like getting to sleep in due to daylight savings time every day or so. DST is bogus anyway because the clocks these days update automatically so I don't notice it anymore. If I had to set my watch back to Martian Daylight Time every day then it would be a different story.
But, didn't the submariners of the world work this problem out decades ago? I know the answer is yes. And, as was stated above, the bitch of doing Martian time on Earth is that an Earth day is not the same length so the sunrise/sunset issue is still going to be a problem unless you simulate a Mars day indoors or underground with no exterior Earth exposure.
This is such a non-issue. /. must be getting desperate for topics.
P.S. They need a new UI designer too. These changes to classic are atrocious! Someone definitely needs to teach them simple good contrast rules. Black text in a dark green search field? White text over a medium to light gray search button? WTF?!?! Good UI design isn't difficult, people. It requires some common sense, thogh.
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I don't get it—why not just sleep in late every day? I know that given my druthers I'd spend 40 extra minutes in bed (or four hours). Doesn't seem like it'd actually be a real problem.
Yet some people actually choose to have 28 hour long days, i.e. 6 day long weeks: http://www.explainxkcd.com/wik...
Stick down a track, get on a train, move at an average of 15.2mph towards sunset and sunrise (if at the equator), day shortened!!
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I've heard of experiments that showed that humans do not actually take to the 24 hour cycle very naturally, and if left to choose their own (without a sun to confuse them) people tend to adapt to a cycle between 28 and 30 hours. In light of that, I'm not sure why a 24:40 cycle would be more challenging than 24:00.
Funny thing is, without external resync our biological clock moves to 25 hour cycle... This was proven in underground tests years ago...
Also isint rocket lag a it wrong name for this, shouldnt it be caller Mars lag?
Back in the 80's, IIRC, there was a study where people were put into a cave with nothing but artificial light and allowed to sleep on their own schedule. They ended up with about a 25 hour day.
"Rocket Lag Burnin' out his fuse up here alone"
I was the MER Spirit Mission Manager, and I was on Mars time for three months in 2004. I adapted to it and liked it. I got to sleep in an extra 40 minutes a day. I had blackout curtains in my bedroom, so that I could sleep in the dark. However I was one of only a few who voted to stay on Mars time after the end of the primary mission. Most of the people on the operations team didn't like Mars time.
You need to have an engineered timepieces that work more slowly. Your hour will be minutes longer, and your Mars pulse somewhat lower. That suggests you should live longer on Mars than if you remained on earth. (grin)
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If you put a person in a cave for a year without any clocks, they fall into a 30 hour 'day' - up for 20, asleep for 10.
Find people who are constantly late...
It's already been noted by numerous studies, that those who wake up early and are always early, tend to have a circadium pattern which follows a shorter minute/date. Those who are late, have a rhythm that results in a longer perceived minute. The end result, those of us who are the latter will probably finally wake up and function the way we should...
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