Daylight Savings Time Is So Bad, It's Messing With Our View of the Cosmos (gizmodo.com)
- Reference: 0179591934
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/09/29/1934243/daylight-savings-time-is-so-bad-its-messing-with-our-view-of-the-cosmos
- Source link: https://gizmodo.com/daylight-savings-time-is-so-bad-its-messing-with-our-view-of-the-cosmos-2000664277
> In a preprint titled "Can LIGO Detect Daylight Savings Time?," Reed Essick, former LIGO member and now a physicist at the University of Toronto, gives a simple answer to the paper's title: "Yes, it can." The paper, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, was recently uploaded to arXiv. That might seem like an odd connection. It's true that observational astronomy must contend with noise from light pollution, satellites, and communication signals. But these are tangible sources of noise that scientists can sink their teeth into, whereas daylight savings time is considerably more nebulous and abstract as a potential problem.
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> To be clear, and as the paper points out, daylight savings time does not influence actual signals from merging black holes billions of light-years away -- which, as far as we know, don't operate on daylight savings time. The "detection" here refers to the "non-trivial" changes in human activity having to do with the researchers involved in this kind of work, among other work- and process-related factors tied to the sudden shift in time. The presence of individuals -- whether through operational workflows or even their physical activity at the observatories -- has a measurable impact on the data collected by LIGO and its sister institutions, Virgo in Italy and KAGRA in Japan, the new paper argues.
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> To see why this might be the case, consider again the definition of gravitational waves: ripples in space-time. A very broad interpretation of this definition implies that any object in space-time affected by gravity can cause ripples, like a researcher opening a door or the rumble of a car moving across the LIGO parking lot. Of course, these ripples are so tiny and insignificant that LIGO doesn't register them as gravitational waves. But continued exposure to various seismic and human vibrations does have some effect on the detector -- which, again, engineers and physicists have attempted to account for. What they forgot to consider, however, were the irregular shifts in daily activity as researchers moved back and forth from daylight savings time. The bi-annual time adjustment shifted LIGO's expected sensitivity pattern by roughly 75 minutes, the paper noted. Weekends, and even the time of day, also influenced the integrity of the collected data, but these factors had been raised by the community in the past.
[1] https://gizmodo.com/daylight-savings-time-is-so-bad-its-messing-with-our-view-of-the-cosmos-2000664277
Lost me at the second word... (Score:4, Informative)
If you don't know that it's called daylight saving time (not savings) then I can't really take anything else you have to say on the subject seriously.
Re: (Score:1)
Beat me to it. I was about to post the exact same thing.
Not Bad (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that LIGO has to adjust for human activity that creates backgrounds is neither good nor bad - human activity creating backgrounds is part of doing precision science. The old LEP electron-positron collider at CERN had such a precise energy calibration that they could detect shifts in the beam energy due to the ground current caused by the TGV train leaving Geneva for Paris. That did not make SNCF's train timetable "bad" - it just means that sometimes human activity can create backgrounds when you are doing extremely precise research.
I wish the media would stop trying to insert their own subjective political biases into scientific stories where they do not belong. This should be a story about how incredibly sensitive LIGO is that it can detect when we all wake up and drive to work, it's not the place for a supposedly objective "journalist" to grind their axe about daylight savings time.
It's that time of the year (Score:5, Insightful)
The article seems to be a dumb-as-a-rock attempt to cash in on the semi-annual time change bitch fest. The actual paper is about LIGO's sensitivity varying over time. That's pretty straightforward: when there's more noise-causing human activity going on around the detectors they're less sensitive. Noise-causing human activity has "clear differences between weekends and weekdays, between day and night (at the sites), and even between daylight-savings and standard time."
That is the point (Score:2)
Changing human behaviour is the whole point of daylight savings time.
On the other hand... (Score:3)
If human activity was on a fixed time, that point in time could never be visible to astronomers, at least not unless LIGO was rebuilt on the moon. This doesn't necessarily offer benefits, but it would be sensible if this was a possibility that was considered.
True, it means we can't use gravitational triangulation, but the detector is nothing like close enough to being sensitive enough to be useful there.
Either way, between radio astronomy, optical astronony, and gravitational astronomy now being largely defunct on Earth due to humans messing things up, we really need detectors on the moon or on Mars before we can do anything significantly beyond what we've already done. Space telescopes are just too small and although you could precisely measure 3D positions with sufficient precision to do interferometry, it would not be easy.
Basically, each space telescope would need to measure acceleration with incredible sensitivity and time with incredible precision, record over a very long time, then have a means of collecting the data on physical media and bring it back to Earth for combining with the other recordings. Real-time interferometry wouldn't be possible.
You're much much better off building your telescopes on the surface of a solid planetary mass like the moon or Mars.
JWST (Score:2)
Of all of the reasons to complain about daylight saving this is not a good one.
TBH (Score:2)
I have always considered myself anti-DST, but with these sensationalist headlines as of late I think I may be on the other side now.
BHST? (Score:1)
> To be clear, and as the paper points out, daylight savings time does not influence actual signals from merging black holes billions of light-years away -- which, as far as we know, don't operate on daylight savings time.
So, you're saying there is a chance?
Use a Control (Score:1)
For example, say Mark Zuckerberg blamed Ray-Bans on Operation Galuga. By the time it reaches the audience, it's too late.
Yeah but it's good for brick and mortar retail (Score:1)
So the cosmos can go fuck itself.
Basically adding an extra hour of daylight increases retail sales. So every time there's any serious attempt to eliminate daylight savings for a raft of good reasons there's a huge push from local retail outlets to keep it.
Usually they buy a bunch of advertisements talking about your kids walking to school in the dark. Think of the children always works after all
Re: (Score:2)
Make all the clocks world wide set to UTC.
Re: (Score:2)
So what if it's pitch black outside at noon? You'll adjust!
Re: (Score:2)
From my region, I might start work at 0200, take a lunch break at 0530, leave work at 1000. Not too hard to work out.
It does mean stores might have to have different signage depending on longitude. But that doesn't seem like that big of a deal to me.