Timeline for I'm stranded on an alien planet. How do I measure an earth year without a clock?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
20 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jul 20, 2023 at 2:44 | comment | added | Escoce | body functions like heartbeat are far to variable between people. My resting heart rate is usually 60 or less and has even gone as low as 48 once since I have been monitoring it for the last several years. My wife on the other hand has a resting heat rate of 80-90. From one extreme to the other, that's nearly double my resting heart rate. | |
| Sep 25, 2015 at 3:46 | comment | added | NPSF3000 | " Instead try for a range. Maybe you're pretty sure your heart rate is between 74 and 89 BPM. " That's a pretty narrow range, my resting is closer to 50 BPM (and I can push that to 45BPM on a good day). On the flip side, with stress and a different atmosphere it could easily raise to 100BPM+ even while 'resting'. | |
| Sep 24, 2015 at 15:31 | comment | added | Todd Wilcox | Totally unrelated to going through a stargate: If you're a human on Earth and your resting heart rate is really 80 BPM, you should make sure your doctor is aware of that, just in case. webmd.com/heart-disease/features/5-heart-rate-myths-debunked | |
| Sep 24, 2015 at 2:33 | comment | added | Nick Matteo | @twiz: If it's not, you're probably frozen to death. Being tidally locked to the star could be a problem for sundials, however. | |
| Sep 24, 2015 at 0:56 | comment | added | twiz | How do you know the planet is orbiting a star? | |
| Sep 23, 2015 at 15:21 | comment | added | Martijn | And what about relativity? | |
| Sep 23, 2015 at 15:12 | comment | added | corsiKa | @MikeScott Someone in this situation is probably a trained astronaut, and thus is probably acutely aware of the mundane details of bodily function, as they will have to have been heavily studied to be cleared for space missions. | |
| Sep 22, 2015 at 16:57 | comment | added | busukxuan | Different gravity means different blood pressure to maintain blood flow, I'm not ready to assume near identical average heart rate. Not to mention blood oxygen level would also be different with a different atmospheric oxygen partial pressure. | |
| Sep 22, 2015 at 15:40 | comment | added | Dan Smolinske | @davethecoder: I understand time dilation, however to get those extreme effects you need to be either travelling near the speed of light, or close to a black hole of galactic scale (where close - kilometers away). Neither of those is likely. Even the largest planets aren't going to have a significant time dilation effect when looking at the scope of this question. | |
| Sep 22, 2015 at 14:52 | comment | added | davethecoder | @DanSmolinske Not really, For instance, near a black hole you would perceive time at a very much slower rate than you would on earth, in fact it could be as much as one second for you, is a year on earth, relatively. It would be same for any giant plant too, and that would also be relative to the gravity within that solar system, the galaxy itself, closeness to any black hole etc. You can go to a high gravity environment, and count 1 second, as one second, that can easily be one minute on earth, when accounting for the stargate jump too, the differentials could mean drop was pickup | |
| Sep 22, 2015 at 14:19 | comment | added | Dan Smolinske | @davethecoder: Time dilation effects in reality are extremely small, nothing like the fictional differences you sometimes see. He might be off by a few seconds at most due to relative time passage, and that error is going to irrelevant compared to the rest of the estimates he's making. | |
| Sep 22, 2015 at 14:05 | comment | added | davethecoder | is time not relative? so even if you could calculate, your calculations wont be relative to earth anyway, for all you know, one second on this new planet, could be 1 year on earth due to the gravity of the planet, galaxy, etc. even if you was to count, or measure, this would still be relative counting. I.E from earth it might look like you are speaking really, really, really slow. earth mite look like it is spinning like crazy. however, light, is supposed to have a constant speed, if you can find a way to measure it | |
| Sep 22, 2015 at 13:25 | comment | added | Dan Smolinske | @hiergiltdiestfu: It's a bit weird and irrational, but I always feel like it's cheating to edit my answers after they've received a fair amount of upvotes (I'm not saying it is, that's just my personal mental block). | |
| Sep 22, 2015 at 11:58 | comment | added | hiergiltdiestfu | @DanSmolinske Adjusting for a different gravity is non-trivial and non-obvious, so maybe edit that into your answer? | |
| Sep 22, 2015 at 6:07 | comment | added | Dan Smolinske | @Aron: I'm assuming you could tell if the gravity was significantly different, and maybe adjust. But really anything you can do without technology is going to be a guess wrapped in a hypothesis wrapped in an estimate in this scenario, I think. | |
| Sep 22, 2015 at 5:54 | comment | added | Mike Scott | Unless you know your own resting pulse rate, then any calculation based on an overall average is likely to fail. Mine is around 55bpm, so if I didn't know that and followed your plan, I would over-estimate the length of an hour by over 50%, and be six months late for the stargate. | |
| Sep 22, 2015 at 5:39 | comment | added | Aron | Unfortunately Dan, you don't know the value of gravity. In a low gravity environment, the heart does not need to work nearly as hard. | |
| Sep 22, 2015 at 1:12 | comment | added | nitsua60 | +1 for try for a range--this is the most important part of any plan you choose. | |
| Sep 21, 2015 at 21:32 | comment | added | Mikey | Oh, +1 for the use of the body. I was sure that was the only way to succeed. | |
| Sep 21, 2015 at 20:40 | history | answered | Dan Smolinske | CC BY-SA 3.0 |