Chuck Darwin on Nostr: November 12, 2024, marks the new year for Mars, when the calendar turns the page from ...
November 12, 2024, marks the new year for Mars, when the calendar turns the page from 37 to 38.
Why would anyone pick November 12 as New Year’s Day for Mars?
And why does our official reckoning of Martian time set the eons-old Red Planet only in its 38th year?
The answer involves a combination of natural cycles and the human need to impose order via somewhat arbitrary timekeeping—pretty much like on Earth.
Here on our home planet, most countries use the Gregorian calendar to keep track of the year.
This was first adopted in 1582 (although it took quite some time to spread around the world) and is your standard 12-month calendar—365 days every year, with a bonus day added on every fourth year (a “leap” year).
The Gregorian calendar starts on January 1 as a holdover from its predecessor, the Roman Empire’s Julian calendar; to honor the god Janus, Julius Caesar proclaimed that day to be the year’s first.
I might wish we marked the first day of the year using a date of some astronomical significance.
The problem there is Earth stubbornly refuses to play nice with any sort of organized calendar.
For example, our planet’s path around the sun is an ellipse, or oval shape. That means there is a point in time when it gets closest to the sun, which we call perihelion.
That seems like a natural date for the start of a new year.
But Earth’s orbital shape changes subtly every year because of the gravitational influence of the other planets, altering the exact time of perihelion.
Another tweak to perihelion’s timing comes from Earth’s moon, which tugs on our planet to make it wobble a bit as we co-orbit the sun.
These make perihelion an unworkably complicated way to start a calendar, even though perihelion also happens to occur in January.
(Aphelion—when Earth is farthest from the sun—occurs in July.)
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/happy-martian-new-year/
Why would anyone pick November 12 as New Year’s Day for Mars?
And why does our official reckoning of Martian time set the eons-old Red Planet only in its 38th year?
The answer involves a combination of natural cycles and the human need to impose order via somewhat arbitrary timekeeping—pretty much like on Earth.
Here on our home planet, most countries use the Gregorian calendar to keep track of the year.
This was first adopted in 1582 (although it took quite some time to spread around the world) and is your standard 12-month calendar—365 days every year, with a bonus day added on every fourth year (a “leap” year).
The Gregorian calendar starts on January 1 as a holdover from its predecessor, the Roman Empire’s Julian calendar; to honor the god Janus, Julius Caesar proclaimed that day to be the year’s first.
I might wish we marked the first day of the year using a date of some astronomical significance.
The problem there is Earth stubbornly refuses to play nice with any sort of organized calendar.
For example, our planet’s path around the sun is an ellipse, or oval shape. That means there is a point in time when it gets closest to the sun, which we call perihelion.
That seems like a natural date for the start of a new year.
But Earth’s orbital shape changes subtly every year because of the gravitational influence of the other planets, altering the exact time of perihelion.
Another tweak to perihelion’s timing comes from Earth’s moon, which tugs on our planet to make it wobble a bit as we co-orbit the sun.
These make perihelion an unworkably complicated way to start a calendar, even though perihelion also happens to occur in January.
(Aphelion—when Earth is farthest from the sun—occurs in July.)
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/happy-martian-new-year/