How do you measure time on a tide locked planet?

[symbolipoint]

Someone wants to explore the question, and is receiving some thoughts on the question.

You did not see much value in that one.

Think what one SEEs. From one place, to another; the "how much" is length, but we(? or whoever) may see this. How do we see time? People may say time is abstract. Why? Something occurs, like any event. Then while something else does or does not happen, we find a change in the first event. What was this change? Passage of some amount of time. Abstract or not, arguable. We people often understand the idea but how to physically show it, some will feel fine with how it is explained and some others will not feel fine how it is explained.

 

[russ_watters]

Someone wants to explore the question, and is receiving some thoughts on the question.

The claim that time is an abstraction is an anti-mainstream science claim, and such claims are not acceptable here. Such claims are sometimes made in the main forums and are shut down for that reason.

I did over-state a bit when I said the "entire" thread was about this: The OP asks "how do you measure time" and 'how to primitives advance to tell the passage of time' (paraphrase). That's fine and interesting, though it seems like he's asking us to develop his plot for him. The suggestion "maybe they don't" was made in post #3, the implication that lacking external time reference would prevent intelligence in post #10. It's devolved from there into the typical logical extent that maybe time doesn't exist/we created it. That's the part that is nonsense and out of bounds here.

The reason I find it bizarre is due to simple/obvious examples such as V50's boiling egg example. I'm sure you can go back further than that, but it's a pretty obvious example of why a perception/use/measurement of time is critical to even the most basic intelligence. A quick google tells me this is an active area of research in animals, and I'd bet that they will be shown to have a basic grasp of the concept of time too.

Think what one SEEs. From one place, to another; the "how much" is length, but we(? or whoever) may see this. How do we see time? People may say time is abstract. Why? Something occurs, like any event. Then while something else does or does not happen, we find a change in the first event. What was this change? Passage of some amount of time. Abstract or not, arguable.

For non-scientists/pseudophilosophers maybe. For scientists, no. Yes, you et al, are correct at least that laypeople believe that the fact that they can see a meter stick now to measure distance but they have to watch a meter stick over time to measure speed makes distance and time meaningfully different...and for some reason time is less real. That doesn't make it true.

 

[russ_watters]

No. You're overreaching in that conclusion about what's being proposed.

Drakkith nails it:

One must have some concept of it just to actually function.

That seems at odds with what you said previously:

Sure, but still I think it's more important to ask if - on a planet that has no clear periodic cycles of its own - a culture would evolve a need to "keep time" at all,

Was that question rhetorical? It appears to me that Drakkith's answer - the obvious one - is yes. Because it's a basic component of the universe, it's required to make sense of things around us/them.

 

[symbolipoint]

For non-scientists/pseudophilosophers maybe. For scientists, no. Yes, you et al, are correct at least that laypeople believe that the fact that they can see a meter stick now to measure distance but they have to watch a meter stick over time to measure speed makes distance and time meaningfully different...and for some reason time is less real. That doesn't make it true.

In there, you are coming close-to the distinction between what is abstract and what is concrete.

 

[russ_watters]

In there, you are coming close-to the distinction between what is abstract and what is concrete.

Yes, that's the distinction I'm making/my point.

 

[DaveC426913]

It's devolved from there into the typical logical extent that maybe time doesn't exist/we created it.

I must have missed this step. Where did anyone suggest that?

 

[russ_watters]

I must have missed this step. Where did anyone suggest that?

I suppose this is where we start arguing over the definition of "abstraction"? I'll pass. I'll just repeat this:

but still I think it's more important to ask if - on a planet that has no clear periodic cycles of its own - a culture would evolve a need to "keep time" at all, let alone invent a device to track it moment by moment.

And respond again with boiled eggs. Boiled eggs are definitely real/not abstract and they require measuring time to reliably create them.

 

[symbolipoint]

I suppose this is where we start arguing over the definition of "abstraction"? I'll pass. I'll just repeat this:

And respond again with boiled eggs. Boiled eggs are definitely real/not abstract and they require measuring time to reliably create them.

Now we can understand how Time can become less abstract. The idea of the "hour-glass" helps with this.

 

[DaveC426913]

That seems at odds with what you said previously:

Was that question rhetorical? It appears to me that Drakkith's answer - the obvious one - is yes. Because it's a basic component of the universe, it's required to make sense of things around us/them.

In the context of critters living their societal lives, It's not more or less a basic component of the universe than periodic solar flares*. But we don't "keep time" of them.

* which I offer that thy live and die by

I think that's where I see a divergence in opinions here. I am seeing the OP's question - about "keeping time" as more a matter of culture and society than of scientific investigation.

If the critters have science at all, of course they will know what time is. And they will be able to count it. But that doesn't mean the "people" will "keep time".

I keep trying to draw an analogy between Earth time-keeping and Critter solar flare-sensing (cuz they orbit an active red dwarf).

Critters would rightly consider flare activity to be critical aspect of survival - far more than some non-survival time-keeping. Contrarily, we Earthlings are aware of flares and study it in our science, but by and large, it is not part of the mechanism of our society. We don't wear flare sensors on our wrists, or arrange our life schedules around their peaks and troughs.

An ecology that evolved over a billion years to survive based in critical survival clues other than frequent day/night cycles (which Critter don't have) is not that implausible.

Is this analogy too tortured to make the point? Is this getting any clearer than mud?

 

[DaveC426913]

And respond again with boiled eggs. Boiled eggs are definitely real/not abstract and they require measuring time to reliably create them.

No they don't. I already offered several (fictional) ways that a Critter might boil an egg properly without needing to time it:

They might learn to know when an egg is cooked by observation - a subtle change in shell colour, a change in its buoyancy, etc. If it didn't happen naturally, they may have developed clever hacks to facilitate it - say, a simple substance that, when added to the water, changes colour when the egg is cooked, etc.

Or poke a small hole in it and watch what bubbles out.

Frankly, timing an egg is a chancy way of determining if it's cooked, since the method is so dependent on altitude, size of egg, initial temp of water etc. - none of which we can take for granted is constant on an alien world. Better to have the egg tell you directly if it is, in fact, cooked.
I submit that a culture that has not evolved in a day-night cycle for a billion years might find themselves evolutionarily attuned to whole other ways to observe changes. And - like time-keeping has for Humans - it might permeate all aspects of their society.

In other words, I think the predilection for organizing the world by periodic cycles (such as seconds, minutes and days) is plausibly biased toward Earth-centrism, and not universal.

 

[russ_watters]

No they don't. I already offered several (fictional) ways that a Critter might boil an egg properly without needing to time it:
Or poke a small hole in it and watch what bubbles out.

Frankly, timing an egg is a chancy way of determining if it's cooked,

Dave, I'm really having a hard time accepting this argument is serious. I don't know for how many thousands of years humans have been boiling eggs, but in that time(!) we haven't come up with a better way than timing them. As you say, your alternative ideas are purely fictional/speculative. Even if we accept that one of these ideas might actually work it doesn't change the underlying issue, that time is the best/easiest way to do it. The argument doesn't just require that the alternative method be discovered first(!) but that it be discovered and applied exclusively. It requires that beings never even notice the existence of time.

 

[Drakkith]

Dave, I'm really having a hard time accepting this argument is serious. I don't know for how many thousands of years humans have been boiling eggs, but in that time(!) we haven't come up with a better way than timing them.

You have a pot that's X big and you fill it with Y water. Bring to a boil and then throw 3 medium eggs in the water. Once half the water has evaporated the eggs are done. There. Now you're using physical amounts of water instead of units of time to know when your eggs are done. No timekeeping device needed.

Even if we accept that one of these ideas might actually work it doesn't change the underlying issue, that time is the best/easiest way to do it.

Not if you don't have a timekeeping device on hand. Like most people have been without for most of human history. Sundials and other forms of ancient time keeping don't even appear in the archeological record until around 1500 BC. And even those wouldn't really be used for timing the cooking of eggs, as they are too imprecise for such a short amount of time or, in the case of something like a crude water clock, wouldn't be something that most people had in the first place.

Besides, whether something is the 'best' way to do it is irrelevant. People might not have been able to boil eggs to their exact liking every time, but they still boiled them when they wanted.

 

[PeterDonis]

Well, that's what that Star Trek episode was all about.

Stanislaw Lem also had a story about a war between the Dextrorotatory Tups and the Levorotatory Tups.

 

[PeterDonis]

Mercury is basically tidally locked

No, it's not. Its period of rotation is about 58 days and its period of revolution about the Sun is about 88 days.

It used to be believed that Mercury was tidally locked to the Sun but that belief was found to be wrong when spacecraft were able to get close enough to Mercury to make detailed observations, sometime in the 1960s IIRC.

 

[Vanadium 50]

It used to be believed that Mercury was tidally locked to the Sun but that belief was found to be wrong when spacecraft were able to get close enough to Mercur

Not exactly. Mercury is tidally locked, but in a 3:2. A 1:1 is at a lower energy but there is an energy barrier to get there - i.e. small perturbations return to the 3:2, not the 1:1.

The 88 days came from looking at Mercury during the best (optical) observing times. Unfortunately, that is also the times when the same face is visible. It was radio astronomy (at the late Aricebo observatory) that a) didn't have this issue, and b) measured the correct 58 days.

Mariner 10 was years later.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Back to the topic at hand. I was evidently not clear

1. Can time be measured without recourse to astronomy? Yes,
2. Is there a need to measure time that has nothing to do with astronomy? Also yes.,
3. Might the aliens be too dumb to build a clock? I don't know. How dumb are they?

 

[chemisttree]

I would think it would involve a pendulum.

 

[PeterDonis]

Mercury is tidally locked, but in a 3:2.

Yes, technically there are multiple possible tidal resonances. But for purposes of this thread, any but a 1:1 tidal lock will result in the planet's star moving in the planet's sky and therefore giving a cyclical time reference.

 

[DaveC426913]

Might the aliens be too dumb to build a clock? I don't know. How dumb are they?

This is still Earth-centric thinking.

 

[Vanadium 50]

This is still Earth-centric thinking.

Which is a criticism that can be lobbed at any unfavored idea.

 

[DaveC426913]

Which is a criticism that can be lobbed at any unfavored idea.

You've got a tougher hill to climb than I do.
I need only demonstrate one path to plausibility.
You need to close off all paths in order to demonstrate implausibility.

And yes, in the creative world of sci-fi/fantasy stories, all things are possible until they shown to not be.

Meta: The circuitous road to the conjecture at the heart of this thread (a culture that doesn't rely standardized timekeeping) is the inspiration the OP might use to write a good story. You don't write a story explaining things already obvious. (Correction, you don't sell a story explaining things already obvious); you write a story to lead readers on a path they might not have taken on their own.I'll add one "last" note: I wonder if we all have different visions of this alien culture. If you and Russ are envisioning a culture with flying cars and skyscrapers, I can see your point; It would be pretty hard to get to that level of technology without accurate time-keeping. But that's only the last century or two of Earth society.

What about a culture that's equivalent to anything 2 centuries to 20 centuries behind us? Do you still think it is utterly implausible that a farming level society didn't ubiquitously use time-keeping as an aide? (Remember, their crops don't have to contend with day-night cycles, and seasonal changes are directly observable.) Time might be something for the scholars, but they might find it pointless in the fields and markets.

 

[Hornbein]

No, it's not. Its period of rotation is about 58 days and its period of revolution about the Sun is about 88 days.

It used to be believed that Mercury was tidally locked to the Sun but that belief was found to be wrong when spacecraft were able to get close enough to Mercury to make detailed observations, sometime in the 1960s IIRC.

Mercury is as tidally locked as a planet in an elliptical orbit can be.

 

[PeterDonis]

Mercury is as tidally locked as a planet in an elliptical orbit can be.

No, it's not. As @Vanadium 50 said, the reason Mercury is stuck in the 3:2 tidal lock is that there is a potential energy barrier between it and the lowest energy 1:1 tidal lock.

 

[chemisttree]

Some natural oscillatory behavior would be a natural timepiece. Perhaps near the terminator there would be an obvious sunset/sunrise due to the planet’s libration? Assumes the orbit is somewhat elliptical.

 

[Malapine]

What about a culture that's equivalent to anything 2 centuries to 20 centuries behind us? Do you still think it is utterly implausible that a farming level society didn't ubiquitously use time-keeping as an aide? (Remember, their crops don't have to contend with day-night cycles, and seasonal changes are directly observable.) Time might be something for the scholars, but they might find it pointless in the fields and markets.

Even without a growing cycle, farmers need to track how long it will take to plant or harvest an acre of vegetables, how long it takes them to mature, how long until the harvested produce spoils and cannot be sold, how long it takes to haul a wagonload to the town market, when the next market will be if there isn't a continual one, etc.

 

[DaveC426913]

Even without a growing cycle, farmers need to track how long it will take to plant or harvest an acre of vegetables, how long it takes them to mature, how long until the harvested produce spoils and cannot be sold, how long it takes to haul a wagonload to the town market, when the next market will be if there isn't a continual one, etc.

Why?

Why track it? Why not just look at it?
The blorn stalks are 4 feet high. By the time we get the threshers out of storage, it'll be perfect for harvest. And market is always on the day the first leaves on the bloak trees fall.

Theyve had a billion years of evolution to get in tune with their world.

 

[Malapine]

Because the farmers that can track this stuff in their heads will have a competitive advantage, getting more acres harvested with less wasted motion, losing less produce to wiltrot, and always showing up at the marketplace a few decableems before you to stake out the best spot.

 

[DaveC426913]

Because the farmers that can track this stuff in their heads will have a competitive advantage, getting more acres harvested with less wasted motion, losing less produce to wiltrot, and always showing up at the marketplace a few decableems before you to stake out the best spot.

But you can't track a growing cycle in your head when the growing cycles are dependent on dozens of external variable factors. (That's true even here on Earth). The best only way to know if a crop is actually ready it is look at it - everthing else is a guess.It's always easy to tell a story that's already been told (the story of how Earth did things), and it's always easy - and lazy - to say "the way we do things is the best".

The point of writing a speculative fiction story is to show, step-by-step how a seemingly implausible thing can come-to-pass plausibly. (otherwise it would be one chapter instead of twenty).

 

[russ_watters]

Greg is ok with this thread, so I'm going to try to drop out, but I'll generalize my concern:

Back to the topic at hand...

3. Might the aliens be too dumb to build a clock? I don't know. How dumb are they?

As a reader/watcher, I think I'd have a hard ...time... accepting a civilization that's too dumb to discover time but smart enough to become a civilization. Arguments about alternative means of...well....timing things are not really persuasive to me. The problem isn't whether they'd work, it's whether the beings could invent them without noticing they were inventing clocks. I'm not a sci fi writer so maybe someone could spin such a yarn and make it compelling, but so far I haven't seen one.

This is still Earth-centric thinking.

Well, it's Earthlings who need to be convinced to buy the book.

 

[DaveC426913]

As a reader/watcher, I think I'd have a hard ...time... accepting a civilization that's too dumb to discover time but smart enough to become a civilization.

You think "dumb" is the correct term here?

Isn't that what the Little-Endians said about cracking eggs on the Big End in Gulliver's Travels?

(The metaphor being "The only smart view is the one we hold. Everything else is dumb.")

Well, it's Earthlings who need to be convinced to buy the book.

Speculative fiction enthusiasts don't tend to buy books with the intention of reading about things already obvious.

 

[russ_watters]

You think "dumb" is the correct term here?

I really do. Time is an obvious and inescapable aspect of how our universe functions. The examples given are, in my opinion, silly/not believable. It would be an exceptional blind-spot to not notice that what they were doing was measuring time.

Speculative fiction enthusiasts don't tend to buy books with the intention of reading about things already obvious.

I'm sure. Maybe I'm not in touch with just how far out there such readers are. Dunno. [shrug]. But I think it would have to involve a different universe or being without or beyond time to be believable. Like Q in Star Trek. At least he was kept vague enough that it was hard to ask questions (though oddly he spent a long...time...in our time). ...and then he died? What?

Also, not quite the same thing, but the time compression device for adding drama to movie action really, really annoys me. It pretty much ruined that one Star Wars movie for me where the Empire was destroying 10% of the rebel ships every second for like 10 minutes.

 

[DaveC426913]

It would be an exceptional blind-spot to not notice that what they were doing was measuring time.

I'm not saying they wouldn't notice; I'm saying it wouldn't be much use in their society. Sure, in egghead labs, but why would society care? An egg is cooked when you see it's cooked, not when some gadget on a lab bench finishes counting.

...it would have to involve a different universe or being without or beyond time

Argh! Reducto ad absurdum fallacy! Sometimes I wonder if you are being deliberately obtuse.I give up. You win. Alien civilizations will evolve in the same way - and come to all the exact same conclusions - as Earthlings. Star Trek is an accurate depiction; the galaxy is populated by races identical to Earthlings except for their foreheads. Spock's famous line is "Zero diversity, in exactly one combination."

 

[russ_watters]

I'm not saying they wouldn't notice; I'm saying it wouldn't be much use in their society. Sure, in egghead labs, but why would society care? An egg is cooked when you see it's cooked, not when some gadget on a lab bench finishes counting.

1. No, you cannot tell when an egg is cooked by looking at the egg.

2. Even if you could, my complaint is that the idea that they don't even notice what's happening isn't credible. Unlike an egg, you can tell when a steak is cooked by poking it (if it is too soft, it isn't cooked). That doesn't mean people don't still time the cooking of their steaks.

You're saying maybe they wouldn't care, but then trying to provide an example where they might not notice. They'd care because they'd notice because it's a major aspect of how the universe works.

My incredulity here is keeping me coming back. The boiling egg is not a mystery. The idea of timing it without realizing you're timing it doesn't make sense. Even if you stand there watching and not realizing it's time that's passing, what do you do while you're waiting? Maybe you start singing a song? The egg boiling song you just wrote because you're bored? As it happens, the egg boiling song lasts as long as it takes to boil an egg. But only because you needed three verses because if you only sing two the egg ends up undercooked. There's no way an ancient civilization that understands little else about the universe doesn't understand that they are counting time when singing the egg boiling song.

I gave an example of studies of people in caves who are denied clocks. You might be able to write a story that uses that as background: people discovering/harnessing time without an external reference is a believable idea to me. Maybe they had chaotic sleep patterns until they discovered time and then that became an enabler of an organized society?

Argh! Reducto ad absurdum fallacy!

It's not a fallacy if the argument is actually absurd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum
Heck, we both agree on the validity of the example, don't we (the boiling egg)? Where's the absurdity besides in the actual idea?

Sometimes I wonder if you are being deliberately obtuse.

In what way? If your issue is that I can't see how one could do things without reference to time, what you might be missing is that my complaint isn't that they can't it's that they wouldn't even notice.

I give up. You win. Alien civilizations will evolve in the same way - and come to all the exact same conclusions - as Earthlings. Star Trek is an accurate depiction; the galaxy is populated by races identical to Earthlings except for their foreheads. Spock's famous line is "Zero diversity, in exactly one combination."

Humans did not invent the laws of the universe, we just discovered them. Yep, other species that are intelligent would, by definition, discover them as well.

 

[symbolipoint]

I give up. You win. Alien civilizations will evolve in the same way - and come to all the exact same conclusions - as Earthlings. Star Trek is an accurate depiction; the galaxy is populated by races identical to Earthlings except for their foreheads. Spock's famous line is "Zero diversity, in exactly one combination."

Nobody won and nobody lost. The topic question seems to have been answered, but some members have not yet recognized. Somebody gave quick mention of a torsion balance? I gave mention of something like an hour-glass; a few other members made some constructive comments too.

 

[hmmm27]

I don't know for how many thousands of years humans have been boiling eggs, but in that time(!) we haven't come up with a better way than timing them.

Put the egg(s) in the pot of tapwater, turn the stove on, turn it off when the water starts boiling, and take the eggs out whenever you get around to it.

Asynchronous is a thing.

 

[renormalize]

What about a culture that's equivalent to anything 2 centuries to 20 centuries behind us? Do you still think it is utterly implausible that a farming level society didn't ubiquitously use time-keeping as an aide? (Remember, their crops don't have to contend with day-night cycles, and seasonal changes are directly observable.) Time might be something for the scholars, but they might find it pointless in the fields and markets.

Perhaps I lack imagination, but I fail to see how a civilization of self-aware individuals can arise without a notion of universal time. (Note that I am excluding here instinctual behavior based on internal rhythms and/or the external daily and seasonal cues available to animals on earth.) Lacking time, how can any set of two or more individuals converge to perform a coordinated group task like conferring, laboring, bartering, worshiping, fighting, etc.? Doesn't this necessitate the ability to dynamically recognize both a particular spatial location at which to gather and a particular point in time to do so? Is it plausible that a civilization could emerge strictly from perpetually uncoordinated, random meetings of individuals?

 

[Drakkith]

What are we even talking about? I was under the impression that we were discussing:

1.) A pre-bronze age civilization at best.
2.) A civilization that absolutely understands what time is, just doesn't have calendars, seasons, days, or anything else that would make an obvious way to track time.

How do they boil an egg?? The same frickin' way we did it for 10,000+ years before the invention of a suitable egg timer. Christ. Does no one realize we didn't have clocks for 99% of human history?

Anyways, this thread seems to have split between the original topic on how do you measure time on a tidelocked planet, and how would a society on such a planet develop in terms of their recognition and use of time in their day-to-day lives. The former is somewhat easy to answer. It just takes some thinking. The latter is very speculative no matter which side or stance you take. I think everyone would do well to remember that.

 

[DaveC426913]

^^ wut he said