Questions tagged [time]

Questions on time, the indefinite progress of events in the Universe.

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When the difference between the dates of old and new style becomes 14?

I'm trying to solve this task: In the twentieth century, the difference between the dates of the old and the new style was 13 days. From what date on the new style will this difference be 14 days? I ...
ALiCe P.'s user avatar
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31 votes
6 answers
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Why does light accelerate instantaneously to c, while no other phenomena do it? [closed]

In physics, it always takes some time for a particle to move from rest to some speed. However, photons (light particles) accelerate instantly from zero to c. How? (A visualization would be helpful.)
AnnexRemotelearn's user avatar
2 votes
1 answer
62 views

When could solar eclipse happen in a way that Sun's disk is diminishing from below?

I'm trying to solve this task: During a solar eclipse, an observer noticed that the diminishment of the Sun's disk began directly from below. Where and when could this be? Concerning "where&...
ALiCe P.'s user avatar
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What is the concept of wormholes? [duplicate]

My main queries for now I guess: What is the theory behind wormholes? What is the possibility and likeliness of their existence based on scientific analysis, not conspiracy theories? What is the ...
Grandpa's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
377 views

Understanding the constant 6.697374558 when finding GMST

I'm trying to understand the constant 6.697374558 mentioned in this question: The Astronomical Almanac gives an expression for approximate mean sidereal time, in hours: $$\mathit{GMST}=6.697374558+0....
Peter's user avatar
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3 votes
1 answer
128 views

Task about equinox and upper culmination

I'm trying to solve this task: At what local time is the point of autumn equinox at its upper culmination three weeks after the vernal equinox? I think it has something to do with the sidereal day (...
ALiCe P.'s user avatar
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1 vote
0 answers
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How to determine time when a photo of star trails was taken?

I was asked to define a time (most likely the month) and location of the picture below. I hope I understood it right that it is the south pole, because we don't see a Polar star in the middle. ...
ALiCe P.'s user avatar
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How to determine how often a planet's center will be collinear with its moon's?

Expanding on the question: Let's say I have a planet orbiting some star (earth-like, sun-like, for the sake of example). If this planet has two moons, M1 with orbital period of 30 earth-days and M2 ...
PedroGaya's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
345 views

Understanding the difference between local time and local sidereal time

I am currently attempting to understand different systems of telling the time: particularly, distinguishing local time (LT) from local sidereal time (LST). I understand that they often differ; despite ...
starstarstars's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
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Energy conservation of the universe

I have tried to derive an equation for the total energy of the universe. I have found that, $$E(t)= \delta\dot a(t)^2a(t)\Omega(t)$$ Where $\delta$ is just a positive constant, a(t) is the scale ...
Stan's user avatar
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29 votes
3 answers
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If months are based on the moon, then why are the months longer in the Gregorian calendar than lunation?

What I have always thought / known is that: Days are based on the period of rotation of the earth. Months are based on the moon. Year is the time taken by the earth to make one revolution around the ...
lunisolar's user avatar
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I'm 8 hours from Greenwich, why is my sidereal time 10 minutes different from theirs?

In order to write and run the script in this answer I typed "Greenwich sidereal time right now?" into google (or at least tried to) and got two numbers. Greenwich sidereal time was 09:51:07 ...
uhoh's user avatar
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3 votes
3 answers
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How can you determine the date using nothing but a star chart from the day and the time?

I'm doing a science olympiad event called Reach for the Stars, and one question that I've encountered provides a star chart and time of day, and you must figure out what month of the year it is from. ...
Random_Guy6666's user avatar
-5 votes
3 answers
640 views

Why do people say travelling at the speed of light or faster is impossible? [closed]

Impossible assumes we know everything there is to know about, well, everything. There was a time when everything mad knew said that traveling faster than the speed of sound was impossible. These same ...
acsmith1972's user avatar
7 votes
2 answers
482 views

Rotation of far away and near by galaxies

Do the far galaxies rotate the same as does the milky way and the near by galaxies?
nir's user avatar
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1 answer
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Synodic Day and Sidereal Day

If given the sidereal day, is it possible to derive the synodic day of Earth? If a derivation is possible, could anyone illustrate it or point me in the right direction? Wikipedia's Synodic day begins:...
Shaun Ethan C. Phangcho's user avatar
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1 answer
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What's the reason the Astronomical twilight doesn't have constant time? [duplicate]

What's the reason the Astronomical twilight doesn't have constant time although its degrees below the horizon (18 degrees) are constant?
Reckless Glacier's user avatar
4 votes
2 answers
270 views

What are the Time Zones on Mercury?

I normally post on worldbuilding, but this question is merely about facts of a planets orbit and spin. I am trying to figure out how time periods work on Mercury to possibly make a worldbuilding guide ...
skout's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
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On Augustus' Actual Prescription to Restore the Julian Calendar to Accuracy

I hope that I may ask this question here as I have seen some favorably received questions related to the Julian calendar on this site. From James Evans' book, ``The History and Practice of Ancient ...
DDS's user avatar
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8 votes
1 answer
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What are the stages in the life of a universe?

Geological periods describe varying phases in the last few hundred million years on earth. Are there any names for the periods on a timescale 1-2 orders of magnitude greater, that is, for the stages ...
stevec's user avatar
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If it only takes 8 minutes for that light to reach the Earth, what took up most of the time? [closed]

If it only takes 8 minutes for that light to reach the Earth, what took up most of all that time to get to the Earth?
Twyla's user avatar
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2 votes
1 answer
110 views

Calculating the Solar Day of an Exoplanet?

I am currently in the process of compiling a list of stars and their planets, given the information in the European Star Catalogue found here, but I'm struggling to find out how to calculate a planets ...
OmniOwl's user avatar
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8 votes
1 answer
580 views

How accurate is the "Equation of time" (mean time to actual solar time)? And how much can it vary from the average?

At Wikipedia, they give equal values (9.87 min) for all four extremes – both troughs and both crests – caused by the obliquity of the ecliptic as seen in the graph below, where the purple dashed line ...
George Lee's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
339 views

How long was a lunar month in ancient times?

As the Moon is getting farther and farther from Earth, it's natural that the time it takes to circle around our planet is going to increase, thus the month will be longer. However, I read that the ...
longtry's user avatar
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0 answers
49 views

What was there before the big bang [duplicate]

we know that our universe is expanding, but we must agree to the fact that it has a limit. It just cant expand till infinity. Eventually there will be a end to time. I thought alot about this and i ...
Kabeer Tariq's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
206 views

Sundial terminology

My homeschoolers are studying the sun & time. We have set up a fence post to create a shadow and we are using it with experiments I found on the web to track the sun. What we cannot find is ...
Bookaholic's user avatar
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11 votes
7 answers
5k views

Why are the time zones calculated as 360°/24 and not 361°/24 or 360°/23.933?

Background: I'm training to be a geography teacher. Currently I have practice lessons and I'll be discussing solar time and standard time with the class. Now I stumbled over an issue to which I could ...
mfran's user avatar
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3 votes
1 answer
3k views

Why does time pass faster in moon than the earth?

One of my friends said that, time passes faster in moon than the earth Why does time pass faster on the moon than on the earth?
Sazzad Hissain Khan's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
61 views

How are various orbital period measured?

How are the sidereal periods and synodic periods of celestial bodies measured from earth? The usual definition of the sidereal period of a celestial body is the time it takes to complete one ...
KaceEnigma's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
176 views

Timekeeping on other celestial bodies than Earth

I have looked for months for any site capable of calculating solar altitude w.r.t an observer located on the surface of a generic celestial bodies, but with no luck as of now. Even NASA does not ...
jumpjack's user avatar
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5 votes
3 answers
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What does BJD-2450000 mean?

In different papers I've encountered time indications in BJD-2450000. I know that BJD stands for Barycentric Julian Date, but I don't understand the meaning of the suffix -2450000. This is an example ...
Laila's user avatar
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6 votes
3 answers
2k views

Julian Day Calculation

I'm trying to calculate the Julian Day, given a UTC year, month and date in the Gregorian calendar. I tried using the formula on Wikipedia, but that doesn't work. Consider 2010-01-31 and 2010-02-01. ...
vcapra1's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
100 views

How can I correct for transit time?

I know the exact time a radio telescope detected a transient event. I also know the exact location of the telescope, and the galactic coordinates (galactic longitude, latitude) and right ascension and ...
PerplexedDimension's user avatar
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0 answers
76 views

Does time flow in a Minkowski spacetime?

In a spacetime where the stress-energy tensor is null (no energy, no matter, no entropy), I wonder whether any motion of the variable time in the phase-space is well defined. The arrow of time, meant ...
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2 votes
0 answers
80 views

If time is not absolute and depends on the gravitational field, then why we keep using our own (particular) time in cosmology?

Sorry if my question is not really clear, but indeed it is not clear in my mind neither. But maybe some of you can help. Time is not absolute and can be affected by the gravitational potential. Now ...
user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
824 views

Convert dates to julian day number in astropy?

I'm using astropy and I need to convert dates like this: 2012.06.22_17:56:15_TAI into julian day number. I tried: ...
Vanessa's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
2k views

How much time passes in the outside universe when falling into a black hole?

If someone were to jump into a black hole, looking back at Earth, how far into the future would they see of Earth? As I understand it, time would dilate approaching infinity as you approach the event ...
Jonathan's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
770 views

How to calculate sunrise and sunset on on a given date and location?

I have a given date at any time in future or past eg: 2016-04-23 or 2022-05-12 Now given at any location(lat,lng). How do i find the time of sunrise or sunset.
Suresh Chaudhari's user avatar
7 votes
2 answers
729 views

How do we measure the age of the universe?

As mentioned in wiki/Age_of_the_universe, The current measurement of the age of the universe is around 13.8 billion years (as of 2015) – 13.799±0.021 billion years When my friend who is not from ...
Sazzad Hissain Khan's user avatar
3 votes
1 answer
305 views

So, what, exactly, is a tropical period?

From timezone.com's On the Units of Time Part III: The Year February 19, 2001, by Edward Hahn: Uh, Oh…He’s Going to Ask That Question Again… So, what, exactly, is a year? @PM2Ring's comment FWIW, ...
uhoh's user avatar
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1 vote
2 answers
4k views

Is a year really 365.24 days, or is it 365.2564 days like I remember?

The NPR News item and podcast Spring Starts Today All Over America, Which Is Weird includes the following: But why isn't the time of the equinox the same each year? The short answer is that the time ...
uhoh's user avatar
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2 votes
2 answers
245 views

When was the longest day on record?

The Earth's rotation is gradually slowing down. It was significantly shorter in the prehistoric past, but now we need to add a leap second every few years and we've not yet had to take any back. In ...
billpg's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
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Encode place and date in star pattern

Disclaimer: I'm an astronomy noob You sometimes see in (B?) movies, that they infer dates from sky patterns. I was asking myself if you can encode a place and date in a mostly meaningful pattern? ...
Augunrik's user avatar
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4 votes
1 answer
174 views

How is the Gould Belt younger than the sun?

Our sun is located in the Gould Belt, a group of stars which is thought to be 30 - 50 million years old. However, the sun formed 4.6 billion years ago. Did the belt form around us?
Phantom's user avatar
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1 vote
1 answer
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What is the exact time of sun stay in each zodiac every year on sidereal year duration?

I tried to reverse engineer from astro-chart times at which sun stays in a zodiac. Here is the list. ...
Suresh Chaudhari's user avatar
2 votes
2 answers
775 views

Does mean solar time and sidereal time sometimes indicate the same time?

I'm trying to wrap my head around the different definitions of time. Since mean solar time depends on the Sun, and sidereal time depends on the stars, and since the position of the Sun relative to the ...
usernumber's user avatar
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0 votes
2 answers
146 views

How can I calculate 27 tropical/solar year since my birthdate?

Let's say I was born on 27th November 1993 at 03:15:15 AM. Is there any way I can calculate exact 27 tropical cycle since my birthdate/birthtime. What date and what time it will be after exact 27 ...
SpiralDev's user avatar
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3 votes
2 answers
99 views

Are there predictions of the distribution of matter at the end of time

Are there any theoretical predictions or "educated speculation" by cosmologists on how matter will be distributed at very, very distant times in the future? For example, will matter be: agglutinated ...
Quora Feans's user avatar
1 vote
1 answer
643 views

Is there a way to know the time according the moon appearance?

Is it possible know the time according to the moon location? To look at the sky at night and then determine what the time is.
Reckless Glacier's user avatar
1 vote
2 answers
118 views

Can I use the Tokyo Skytree as clock?

After my observation today at the Skytree in Tokyo, I am wondering if this building could be used as a giant sundial? As an aside, it would be interesting to consider how the Skytree might be used ...
FrankStein's user avatar