The clocks that lose 39 minutes
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- Опубліковано 19 сер 2023
- Ruth Amos and Shawn Brown ('Kids Invent Stuff') and Dani Siller ('Escape This Podcast') face a question about some confused clocks.
LATERAL is a weekly podcast about interesting questions and even more interesting answers, hosted by Tom Scott. For business enquiries, contestant appearances or question submissions, visit www.lateralcast.com
GUESTS:
Ruth Amos: @KidsInventStuff, / ruthamos
Shawn Brown: @KidsInventStuff, / shawnmakes
Dani Siller: @consumethismedia, / escthispodcast
HOST: Tom Scott.
QUESTION PRODUCER: David Bodycombe.
RECORDED AT: The Podcast Studios, Dublin.
EDITED BY: Julie Hassett.
GRAPHICS: Chris Hanel at Support Class. Assistant: Dillon Pentz.
MUSIC: Karl-Ola Kjellholm ('Private Detective'/'Agrumes', courtesy of epidemicsound.com).
FORMAT: Pad 26 Limited/Labyrinth Games Ltd.
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: David Bodycombe and Tom Scott.
© Pad 26 Limited (www.pad26.com) / Labyrinth Games Ltd. 2023. - Розваги
Oh but the most interesting part: they use the clocks at home too, so that their sleep schedule lines up with Martian night. Leading to some awkwardness when the PR people schedule a press conference in the middle of the night for them.
Yep when you are on mission you want to time your activities based on the availability of solar power on mars. The Martian rotational period is 39 minutes shorter then the Earths so each day your work schedule shifts 39 minutes as well. Thus people working heavily on these projects just spend periods of time living their daily lives on Mars time.
And for those that are curious 👀 most employees do rotations on and off Mars time as the rover missions last so long now. This way part of the time they have the opportunity 👀 to live a normal family life.
@@LogicalNiko *39 minutes longer
@@LogicalNiko I see what you did there. Ingenious 👀
@@LeonardoDaFinchy That's the spirit 👀!
@@LiveFreeOrDieDH Looks like everyone's persevering 👀with these jokes.
I'm going to have to sit this one out, hah. 39 minutes/day is a very big giveaway to a specific group of nerds.
Even if you don't know the exact number, it's not unlikely that you have an association with days *almost* the same as a normal Earth day.
It's hard to imagine what else that could be relevant for.
…and anyone paying attention when reading or watching “The Martian”.
I wasn’t sure if the answer to the question was going to be NASA or JPL, though!
What did you just call me?
@@tomgidden I think it probably should have been JPL -- NASA does the launching, but JPL built and runs the rovers AFAIK.
@@JonReevesLA JPL is owned by NASA.
I knew this immediately thanks to reading The Martian and learning a day on Mars lasts 24 hours and 39 minutes.
Same.
For anyone interested, great book. Highly recommend
I knew it for other reasons.
Wouldn't that be gaining 39 minutes?
@@comicus01 No. That threw me for a second too, but no. Imagine letting the clock run for 24 hours. Then you need another 39 minutes. So you set it backward by 39 minutes. The clock is now 39 minutes behind the real time. That is referred to as losing 39 minutes.
Gaining or loosing is just a coloquialism, but that is the way the term is used.
@@christafranken9170Amazing book and a great movie (with one really freaking dumb scene). I think both are well worth the time.
Soon as I saw this, this reminded me of something very obscure I came across on Wikipedia years ago... 'UTC+04:51', which as a time zone offset sticks out like a sore thumb, is apparently used to represent the old Bombay time, which was historically 39 minutes behind Indian Standard time (at UTC+05:30, which funnily enough was referenced in a previous episode). At 01:20, I thought for sure Ruth had thought of this. I mean, it's obviously not what the question was asking, but still very interesting coincidence.
There's a nice video about timezone where I learned that there are :30 timezones and one :45… I think the creator's name was Tom Scott or something 😊
It wouldn't be running slower or faster though, it would just be set to a different time and run at the same speed.
Damn it, I guessed Mars at the start, but I was like "lose 39 minutes? So instead of 24 hours this means 23h 21m", when it's the other way around (Mars' day is 24h 39m)!
Sometimes I feel >so< smug when I know an answer, and I just want them to go on and on...
This was a big thing with the Spirit and Opportunity missions, which were unexpectedly generating so much data, and had so much capability and potential that it required several quite large crews of people (mission planners, rover engineers, radio systems, etc etc) who could only do so many shifts before they took a holiday to resynch with Earth time. I wouldn't want to have a day synched to Moon days, which are 29 and a half(ish) Earth days long.
My guess when I saw the video title was the clock was designed for Europe/North America being used in the other area because of the differences in power frequency, but then the difference wouldn't be 39 minutes, it would be 4 hours (50hz vs 60hz is a 1/6 difference, and 4 hours is 1/6 of a day)
That was where I went second, but again couldn't make any conversion between 50/60 Hz in either direction come to any useful numbers.
That was my first thought as well. I didn't realize the clocks ran that much faster.
I thought it was the length of the day for the moon.
@@burrytellam A day on the moon is about 29 Earth days. Since the moon keeps the same face toward Earth as it orbits, that means that local daylight lasts about two weeks.
One of those questions were I'd have to step down right from the get-go.
i love this youtube show and the clips just KEEP coming! How did I miss all this?!? Im hooked.
I'm not sure I'm understanding your question correctly, but... it's not a UA-cam show. It's a podcast. So you will never see a full episode on UA-cam (they aired the very first episode in its entirety, but none since then). They just post clips to YT as a promotional thing (and since the podcast continues to run, they constantly have new clips to post) but if you're hoping to catch the actual show on Tom's UA-cam channel, you're out of luck.
These are fascinating to watch once from the question answerers' perspective and then again from the question asker's perspective.
I so wish the full programmes were published here and not just the clips of single questions. I am hard of hearing and the subtitles *really* help me so UA-cam recordings are great for that. Straight podcasts much less so
took 'em ages to find the answer. i was sitting here thinking "are they gonna get it? are they gonna get it?" and they did.
I knew it instantly from the precise 39 minutes in the title. I’m that much of a nerd. 😆
As someone who knew this just from space exploration and rovers, I now wonder where this would be spoilers.
I knew this had to be something to do with space. I thought maybe it had something to do with sidereal days
Whodathunk reading Kim Stanley Robinson would have me committing to an answer
"....and climbing to the top of the billboard 100 this week: 39 Minutes Lost with I Didn't Think Of The Robot People"
Tom asks the question…
Followed my about 5 minutes of me screaming
MARS! MARS! MARS!!! IT’S MARS!
You and me both. Easiest question in the world if you know someone who has lived on Mars time.
I got this immediately because of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series. His Martian colonists use a clock that runs at Earth speed for 24 hours and then stops for 39 minutes at midnight. They use it as a sort of meditative period.
My second guess was the Mars isolation training/experiment camp things. Because they do simulate a lot, including time delay for communications. I'm actually curious if they have similar clocks there.
There are farmers that have milk cows that use a reduced day schedule with their cows. The cows stay inside. In this way they just produce a little bit more milk per 24 hours. But is also means that the farmer has to adjust his schedule of milk sometimes the cows in the middle of the night.
I think that's true of egg-laying hens as well. If you keep them inside and use artificial light to shorten the day, they can produce an egg like every 22 hours or something like that.
when i read 39 minutes i immediately thought "oh, it's mars"
thanks Eschbach!
The "wild swing" hint got me to think about Foucault pendulums, and depending on lattitude they can run 39 minutes slow (but do not have to be 'designed' to do that, because it is the earth rotating underneath it, I still like those pendulums quite a lot).
I thought Mars, googled Mars, read "24 hours, 37 minutes and 22 seconds", thought that's not it, but I should have read the fine print: "Its sidereal day is 24 hours, 37 minutes and 22 seconds, and its solar day 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds."
The ISS uses GMT/UTC for all time references. If the International Space Station were to use its own time reference it would experience 24/hours in 90-93 minutes (depending on the current orbit distance as it is variable). Which would mean every orbital hour would last about 3.8 minutes in earth time, and each minute would be about 3.8 seconds.
If we go by the book, hours could seem like days...
@@charliedobbie8916 Like Lieutenant Saavik
i absolute nailed the answer it myself right at the start of the episode and spent watching the rest of the episode really second-guessing myself as they all discuss it
I was waiting for a Mark Watney reference
I knew this almost immediately because I remembered an xkcd comic about 7/11s on mars closing for 39 minutes each day.
I wonder, hearing the 'train driver' relativity question, whether Tom Scott has read "The Time and Space of Uncle Albert", by the late physicist Russell Stannard - he'd be roughly the right age to have read it as a child not long after it was first published.
...and yeah, I'd have definitely had to have sat on my answer from the start there.
I saw the title and I was like "oh, martian clocks!"
At first I thought it was Mars related. Then the conversation went heavily towards the moon which made me doubt my answer. Then it ended up actually being Mars. 😂
I should have guessed Mars first, but I started thinking sidereal day (which is only a few minutes off) and then lunar/tidal day (which is 50 minutes slower). I thought that a lunar day clock would be useful for people doing Moon observations as well as for surfers and other folks in the shoreline.
I'm pretty sure that clock made it into one of my iPhone/iPod dock alarm clocks, because that clock was never telling the right time.
omg, I had a Logitech iPod dock that drifted and within a week it was quite far off!
Did you hear it? Astronomers and NASA geeks everywhere screaming "MARS rover crews!" at their phones. When you know, you know. Good puzzle!
Great question!
I recently heard Mars referred to as the Robot Planet. That is quite accurate. It is a plannet entirely inhabited by robots.
Gatecrashing this UA-cam clip/highlight with a demand for the rendition of 'Modern Major General' from (this) episode 45!
I thought losing 39 minutes each day meant it got 39 minutes longer every day. I was so lost
My first thought was sidereal time, but I had to look it up again and find that it was only 4 minutes. (I could have reasoned it out again by dividing a day by 365 (and a quarter or so).) Still would have gotten the right customer, but for the wrong space object.
I would've slammed on the "nope, I'm out" on this.
The first such watch was actually a vintage WWII watch carefully modified, and given to Steve Squyres, who I've met. In high school I was a student intern attracted to the Spirit rover. It was symbolic; since then, I hear such clocks have become standard because researches live on the Martian schedule.
"you go around every hour and a half, time, after time, after time …"
Note to self: don't read the comments before watching the entire segment. lol
Nice, the dozens of times I listened to The Martian finally paid of
Amusing when the random esoteric knowledge rattling around in your brain from reading Kim Stanely Robin 20 years ago is useful. Just the title alone I knew exactly what this was for/about.
My first thought was, if I were on the show I'd say something like, "My first thought is, like, is this a Mars clock? Because I know that their day is slightly longer than 24 hours, but I think it was 37 minutes and not 39."
And then I'd be really embarrassed because I would have cut that question short.
Martian GRAVITY is 37% of Earth, so you were VERY CLOSE.
Mars' sidereal day is 24 hours 37 minutes and 22.65 seconds, while Mars' solar day is 24 hours 39 minutes, so in that way you were not wrong
@@stevevernon1978More like 38% of Earth's.
Same here. I thought Mars, googled Mars, read "24 hours, 37 minutes and 22 seconds", thought that's not it, but I should have read the fine print: "Its sidereal day is 24 hours, 37 minutes and 22 seconds, and its solar day 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35 seconds."
For some reason I immediately went to tides because they shift by about 40 minutes a day as well.
Wait - if it LOSES 39 minutes every day, everyone goes home 39 minutes later.
yeah, i knew that one right away. i'm pretty sure they talked about the time difference in The Martian, which i've read like 4 times.
I was doing a different calculation, to see if it's compensating for Earth's journey around the sun, and weirdly that's almost exactly a factor of 10 too much.
I had the same instinctual guess
I was like "this is the clocks the london underground bought from an american company that slowly ended up being off throughout the day because their batteries sucked and as they discharged the clock ran slower, and they put clocks beside those ones that said 'This clock is accurate to real time' or something like that" but nope, it was space.
Omega sell a Marstimer watch. It's a watch that keeps track of time on both Earth and Mars. I think it was to be used on some cancelled mission, now it's just a luxury piece for people who don't want to brag their watch can go to the deepest trench in the ocean, but something cooler.
I instantly knew this one.
My initial thought is Jeff Bezos
I don't care what your watch says, you clock out when this clock says it's 6
I was so close on this one at the beginning but discounted my guess by having the lose 39 minutes in the question be going the other direction
I nearly always get these before the guests. I feel so superior. 🎓
I figured it out when I remembered that NASA personnel who monitor the mars rovers have to constantly shift their work schedule to coincide with the shifting day and night cycles on Mars.
You say the clock loses time. Do you mean it runs slow? A Martian day is longer than an Earth day.
That's what "loses time" means. It's quite a common phrase.
@@lateralcast ... Divided by a common tongue.
@@lateralcast It's far more common in Englandland than in the USA
I got this one right away, because I have a sleeping disorder. Circadian Rhythm Disorder Non-24 hours. My internal clock is almost exactly Martian time.
Is that an official diagnosis? I was under the impression that we all have individual circadian rhythms that differ more or less from the optimal 24 hours, and that was what makes us morning people or evening people. Morning people have a rhythm of less than 24 hours and evening people the other way around. I’d guess that my personal circadian rhythm is about 26-27 hours, but if you have an actual medical diagnosis about this I’d love to hear more about it, and to be corrected if I am misinformed!
@@MarcusBjorkander It's not an "official" diagnosis, because the testing I would need to do sounded like torture and there's nothing they can do anyway. There's no medication or CBT I can do. Part of my brain is broken and I just have to live with it.
But it is very different from being a morning or evening person. If you are a morning person, you wake up early, but at the same time every day.
On the other hand, I wake up about different time every day and it continually rotates. Today I woke up at just after 7 am. Tomorrow it will be able 7:30. Then a little after 8, etc.
That's is if everything is going well. If things go wrong and I have a lot of outside stress, then it will bounce around at random. There's no way to control it, so I just have to live with it.
Other people mentioned the Martian, but I knew this from Offworld Trading Company, which actually rounds the number to 40.
I would have sworn it was something to do with the moon and tides!
My guess (before I found out) was that it was clocks to shoot things at 25fps that would later be converted to 24fps for cinema (Ridley Scott did this for Alien so the shutters synchronised with UK PAL TVs).
4:42 could also be a Tyooesday
After reading Red Mars, by Kim Stanley Robinson, I knew this just from the title.
I saw 39 minutes in the title and I immediately knew it had to do with Mars, and hence NASA. Perhaps ESA has a clock or two as well.
I presume the clocks are electric, but it would be awesome if NASA also had a windup clock on Mars time. Clocks using a pendulum would be trivial to make them run on Mars time: the weight on the pendulum is adjustable, and you just have to lower it by the appropriate distance.
For some reason I thought of Corgi Shitting Time, if anyone remembers that XD
Guess at 2:25 : NASA ? Is the ISS orbiting such that if you remove 39 minutes it makes an even number of orbits?
At 4:38 : some mars rover?
If I can be pedantic for a minute, the clock doesn't exactly "lose time" : a minute is a minute, an hour is an hour, it just has more than 24 hours on its face. 😊 But I get how that would be a stranger question to understand.
Nice
I thought it's about that slight difference between earth day and earth full rotation period. As in rotation with the sun as reference vs rotation with the stars as reference. But I think it's about 4 minutes rather than 39.
I was about 98% sure it was NASA, for the Mars missions, but I did not know if THAT was the time difference between an Earth day and a Martian day.
I would've guessed that they'd be related to the sidereal day (rotation of Earth relative to the stars, not the Sun), but turns out the difference there is merely 4 minutes, not 39.
I was thinking of cruise ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean, but the clock would only be relevant in one direction and if the ship travelled at a consistent speed.
My first thought was that it was for people who have a hard time waking up on time 😀
My first thought is the lunar calendar since 1401/1440 roughly translates to losing 11 days a year which is important for Islamic holidays.
Will the post credit gullibert and sullivan song be aired
the first thing that came to my mind was Mars, but then I wondered if a martian day was this similar to an earth day
I knew it immediately…
Wise of you not to include Scott Manley on the panel!
Mars time, probably buzz aldrin.
I purchased an early & cheap digital watch .., gained 3 mins per day ... I was early for that interview ...
Who is their most famous customer? My first thought was Kim Stanley Robinson.
When I heard "39 minutes", I immediately thought "Mars". But then I got hung up on the gain/lose wording and had it backwards. Took me a couple minutes to realize my mistake.
Ywp, I understood it but o didn't like the use of the phrasing of losing time, you get 39 bonus minutes every day (KSR structured the day better than current sol count)
That's two in a row I figured out from the title only.
in a parallel universe this question was asked by the 4th person in a Lateral with Tom Scott, Matt Parker and Scott Manley
and answered in milliseconds!
My first thought was that 39 minutes per day was too little to be a 50Hz/60Hz thing, but far too much to be a GPS time dilation thing, so I was out of ideas... my own fault for not having this particular stat memorised...
I thought it was the ISS rather than Mars, but I knew it was NASA straightaway.
I was gonna say most famous customer is Mark Rober because he helped put curiosity on Mars and might need that time? But yeah NASA is probably way more famous.
A day on the moon is not at all close to an Earth day. It is about a month (exactly a month by some definitions of month)
The one question I have is why, in this digital age, would you need to manufacture a clock for this purpose? Why wouldn't you simply program a clock to move fast enough lose 39 minutes per Earth day?
There are more robots than humans in space.
Clocks with low battery also keep loosing time, but then it wont be that accurate.
Mars mission control?
Edit: yep
Boo
My first thought was NASA
That would have been a very short round
For some reason.... I thought of some sort of lunar observatory. Because you'd want to be awake when the moon is visible. I don't actually know what that difference is, but I feel like it's close to 39 minutes.
those clocks are very strange.
Scientists have discovered an alien world populated entirely by robots!
I saw the thumbnail and ignored it, thinking was the video about.... Iranian time zone? Whichever one is off by an odd amount
UTC+04:51, yeah I thought the same and it's such an amazing coincidence that it's 39 mins behind IST
Fun Fact: Mars is the only known planet that is completely populated by robots. (Take THAT, Cybertron!)
I was thinking it might be for a probe we sent out into space. Maybe it's travelling at the specific speed such that if an alien discovered it and sent a message back to us with a timestamp, the timestamp would be perfectly correct.
that would be just the one clock, not a sales item. :P
@@thekaxmax They might need backups. The question also never specified that he sold multiple clocks to the same person. It could just mean, he sold one and still has them on sale. Also a "sales item" is literally just anything that's been sold
@@owencmyk Any backups would be also handmade for the craft. They'd only make three if they felt the need for backups. Also more that the speed for which that would be necessary is more than 10% the speed of light, and we can't do a thousandth of that yet.
Are these clocks still sold? wouldn't you do this in software by now?
Calling it early: this is about sidereal days vs solar days right? For astronomers?
Honestly, my first guess was half right. I guessed Mars, but I thought it would be one of Elon Musk's weird things he does. Like hang a Martian clock on his wall or something.