Things you often Wonder

[Stevo985]

5 minutes ago, Chindie said:

A second is a second everywhere in the known universe.

Yeah but a second is one 60th of a minute, which is one 60th of an hour which is one 24th of the time it takes for our earth to rotate once.

If you travel to a planet where they rotate 5.174 times the speed that our planet does, all those points of reference for measuring time are messed up. It doesn't make sense to split time up like that when the parameters are different. Suddenly a day or a year are much longer or shorter periods of time. You can still measure them in earth seconds and minutes, but then you'd have like 4.64 hours in a day on Planet X. And maybe you'd have 8,500 of their days in a year, which in earth time is about 4.5 years. So they would measure time completely differently. Or their behaviours would be completely different to ours.

Edited February 16, 2021 by Stevo985

[bannedfromHandV]

11 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

Yeah it's not even that part of it I mean. That stuff IS mindblowing though.

I just meant if you assume time moves at the same speed everywhere, it would just be your references that would be messed up. A day is one rotation of the earth. But if you're on a planet that does 6 rotations in the same amount of time then everything you're used to would be messed up. How would people there act? Would they have 6 sleeps in the time we had one? Would stuff stay open all the time?

How would you even measure time?

 

I guess it's just the realisation that time, or how we measure it, is completely dependant on our planet. Everything we use as a reference for time is based on our earth and our parameters that we've established. As soon as you leave our planet all those references are meaningless (unless, like Hanoi suggested, everywhere is tied to the time references of one particular planet. But that would have it's own problems)

Well if time is linear then it has an origin, and potentially an ending. We’ve just hopped onto it at some stage and tried to make sense of it in terms we can understand and relate to.

Its both fascinating and well beyond my level of comprehension.

[GarethRDR]

How do you count seconds if the planet you're on has no Mississippi?

[bickster]

9 minutes ago, GarethRDR said:

How do you count seconds if the planet you're on has no Mississippi?

Hope they have elephants

[StefanAVFC]

On 08/02/2021 at 14:52, Seat68 said:

Tik tok is where it should have stayed. Based on a viral video the guy has jacked his job in and was all over telly. Then Jackie Weaver happened and he was replaced by her being in everything. Next week it will be a baby that looks like a potato. 

To be fair, he didn't just jack his job in off the back of Tiktok. He got a record deal.

[Chindie]

14 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

Yeah but a second is one 60th of a minute, which is one 60th of an hour which is one 24th of the time it takes for our earth to rotate once.

If you travel to a planet where they rotate 5.174 times the speed that our planet does, all those points of reference for measuring time are messed up. It doesn't make sense to split time up like that when the parameters are different. Suddenly a day or a year are much longer or shorter periods of time. You can still measure them in earth seconds and minutes, but then you'd have like 4.64 hours in a day on Planet X. And maybe you'd have 8,500 of their days in a year, which in earth time is about 4.5 years. So they would measure time completely differently. Or their behaviours would be completely different to ours.

A second is a universal measurement. It's defined as

The second is defined as being equal to the time duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the fundamental unperturbed ground-state of the caesium-133 atom.

Which means, as far as we're aware, a second is a second anywhere in the universe.

So whilst 'days' 'months' etc are potentially less useful as a measurement, time itself is still measured the same. The rest of it is just preference.

[ender4]

2 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

 if that is in fact a tiny number of people and most people never go anywhere. If the latter, presumably each planet would have its own local time system and most people would never need the 'Galactic Standard Time' except for, I dunno, official documents or something.

Almost certainly.   

It's like 99% of people don't leave the UK except for an annual holiday to a tourist resort.  They change their watch/phone to the local time when there.

So similar with space travel, most people will always stay on the same planet, except for a 2 week trip to the tourist planets.  

 

[Brumerican]

The concept of seconds , minutes and hours are embedded into the construction of the Pyramids in Giza FYI. 

(Amongst many other amazing things that could only be known from viewing our planet from outer space over a period of time that would be impossible for humans to do. )

If this doesn't blow your mind then I don't know what would.

 

[useless]

I could be wrong but I don't think the different length of days on different planets has anything to do with time speeding up or slowing down. If you were somehow on a planet that had a 48 hours in a day, you would still experience those 48 hours as you would experience 48 hours on planet earth, it would still feel like two earth days, so you would still need two sleeps in that 48 hour period.

And if you were somehow in a situation where time is being slowed down to a significant degree by either speed or gravity, I don't think that from your perspective you'd notice any difference, an hour would still feel like an hour, because the gravity or speed would not only be slowing down mechanical clocks, but also our biological clocks, so we would still perceive time to be passing at the normal rate, although outside observers not affected by the gravity/speed would notice a difference.

Or at least that's what I think I have a vague memory of reading in a Brian Greene book quite a while back, have probably remembered wrong.

 

[HanoiVillan]

8 minutes ago, useless said:

I could be wrong but I don't think the different length of days on different planets has anything to do with time speeding up or slowing down. If you were somehow on a planet that had a 48 hours in a day, you would still experience those 48 hours as you would experience 48 hours on planet earth, it would still feel like two earth days, so you would still need two sleeps in that 48 hour period.

And if you were somehow in a situation where time is being slowed down to a significant degree by either speed or gravity, I don't think that from your perspective you'd notice any difference, an hour would still feel like an hour, because the gravity or speed would not only be slowing down mechanical clocks, but also our biological clocks, so we would still perceive time to be passing at the normal rate, although outside observers not affected by the gravity/speed would notice a difference.

Or at least that's what I think I have a vague memory of reading in a Brian Greene book quite a while back, have probably remembered wrong.

 

That makes sense if you teleported there, but presumably you have spent some significant period of time on a spaceship getting there, during which time there were no 'days' as such. Do astronauts' body clocks still conform to a 24-hour cycle even after weeks, months or years (in earth time) in space?

[useless]

Their perception of time might be distorted a little at first, but I doubt to a significant degree, I'm pretty sure they'd still feel tired and the need to eat at the same intervals as they did whilst on earth, and an earth hour would still feel like an hour. As far as I'm aware the reason why other planets have longer or shorter days is because of their position relative to the sun, it's not because time is intrinsically moving faster or slower on that planet, it's because that planet is taking a longer or shorter amount of time to orbit the sun, but we would still experience time in the same way we do on earth.

[useless]

I'm not good at chess, know the rules, or used to, but don't know any of the strategies or anything like that.

I like snakes and ladders because it's simple and because of that has sort of laid back charm to it, there's also an element of mystery involved, not knowing what dice you're going to throw where you're going to land, or whether you're going to land on a snake or a ladder.

Edited February 16, 2021 by useless

[Shomin Geki]

9 hours ago, useless said:

I'm not good at chess, know the rules, or used to, but don't know any of the strategies or anything like that.

I like snakes and ladders because it's simple and because of that has sort of laid back charm to it, there's also an element of mystery involved, not knowing what dice you're going to throw where you're going to land, or whether you're going to land on a snake or a ladder.

This reminds me of a perennial quest of mine: The hunt for good new 'table-top' games.  The adjacent wondering here is the seeming inflexibility of the established canon.  I finally played the game Catan last year and after a bit of research discovered it's regarded as a seminal title in the rise of 'German-style' games, as opposed to a more 'American' approach.  The game is approaching its thirtieth anniversary but still isn't seemingly as well-known as the 'classics', i.e. chess, snakes and ladders, monopoly, charades, poker and other card games etc.  But it's the 'newest' established game I can think of.

I've been planning on looking into this more extensively, but the set-up of all the 'classics' is pretty familiar and understood in terms of duration, relatively basic rules, social occasion of play and so on, which I'm guessing has something to do with the emergence of 'leisure societies' and the casualisation of socialising.  Many games seem like an extension or an echo of a previous staple.  Now, the world has changed, and we've changed with it, to a seemingly profound degree, especially in the last twenty years, but our diet of games seems to have remained quite constant.  I'm not a gamer, but video games also seem to be quite siloed into genres and mechanisms of some familiarity.  There's the rise of Cards Against Humanity, which in a way feels new, but if anything it's an even more passive game than many of those mentioned above.

What is this seeming stasis in the games we play socially reflective of?  Are we just conditioned to repeat familiar, reassuring rituals and ceremonies, is it something to do with a certain perfection in game design and dynamics, or is there something, for want of a better word, quite socially becoming about the games we play, that the temperament required and incentivised, a little exciting and dangerous, but not too much, is the kind of mellow high that reliably connects us all?  Or have we gone through so many permutations in our games that there's been something of a natural evolution towards the ones that work the best?  Will we be playing the same roster of games in the decades to come, or will our collective and individual advancement seek more complex, or more thrilling, or meatier experiences?

I think my favourite game to play, sadly difficult of late, is Werewolf/Mafia.  That sense of theatre and performance, admittedly there in the likes of poker, just makes it more exciting for me, not to mention psychologically compelling.  As Useless mentions above the mystery and the charm, the ambience or being if you will, of the games, is an important element to the joy of this pursuit, but I wonder if there's something a touch undemanding about the whole routine.  I've played games of Werewolf, and I like to play a modified version with added characters and elements to up the complexity, where there was very little engagement, which surprised me as the game can be a real Event in the right circumstances.  Cultivate a spooky playlist, get the lighting and beverages right and you have a very memorable evening.  But maybe the element of deception, of detective work and elimination, is unsettling for some.  So Monopoly or Taboo is brought out again and everyone is happy.  Be there's more to be discovered isn't there?

So, will there be new games that become embraced en masse, maybe even a social gathering game that is truly reflective of its times?  Are there some potential classics that just haven't 'crossed over' for some reason?  If games did become more ambitious or complicated does the level of commitment just become unassailably ambitious, like Magic The Gathering or some such?  Is there a secret formula out there waiting to be discovered and embraced?  Or is this as good as it gets?

(TLDR: Virus, you no fun!)

[fruitvilla]

What's the simile behind clearing in the woods?

[fruitvilla]

14 hours ago, Chindie said:

A second is a second everywhere in the known universe.

The problem with this statement is that even on Earth this is not true for at the planet's surface and in orbit.

[useless]

I think people probably play the same games that they've always played, for the same reason we play the same sports or variations on the same sports that we've always played, enjoy the same stories via whatever medium with very similar plots, motifs and characters and so on that we've always enjoyed. There must be some reacurring theme in them that appeals to our basic human nature.

[mottaloo]

1 hour ago, fruitvilla said:

What's the simile behind clearing in the woods?

Well if you imagine the pubic hair around a lady's foo foo to be the woods, then the foo foo is the clearing.

I think, anyway 

[Genie]

36 minutes ago, mottaloo said:

Well if you imagine the pubic hair around a lady's foo foo to be the woods, then the foo foo is the clearing.

I think, anyway 

rhymes with hunt.

Edited February 17, 2021 by Genie

[mjmooney]

1 hour ago, mottaloo said:

Well if you imagine the pubic hair around a lady's foo foo to be the woods, then the foo foo is the clearing.

I think, anyway 

And the word it replaces is apparently an archaic term for a... clearing in the woods. 

[Stevo985]

1 hour ago, Genie said:

rhymes with hunt.

Rhymes with pat actually