Religions, time and other worlds

Now let's get into the fun relationships between various religions and the clock/calendar and how this can mess things up on other planets.

The various Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) all have their own calendars, with various relationships to the sun and moon. The Baha'I have yet another calendar, but share the 7-day week with the other three.

Judaism and Islam have the day starting with sunset. *Actual* sunset.

This led to problems when Jews started living around and above the Arctic circle. As I understand it, this led to a ruling that in cases where the sun is not practical to use, you use the sunset in Jerusalem.

To the best of my knowledge, Islam has not yet dealt with this.

Christian monks were one of the drivers behind clocks in the Western world, so the Catholic church and its descendants pretty much run on clock time, not solar time. The Liturgy of the Hours (and the canonical hours based on it) follow clock time for the most part.

Islam definitely runs on solar time. There's a simple test for when the daylight (and thus things like the daylight fasting in Ramadan) begins. It's when you can tell the difference between a white thread (hair) and a black one laying in the palm of your hand. A quick search for an equally clear definition of sunset didn't turn up anything equally simple, but from the learned arguments I encountered, it is most definitely an *observation al* event, not a calculated or clock based one.

Islamic prayer times are equally tied to the sun.

So what Moslems on Mars or some planet around another star will do is unknown. If I had to guess, they might go with Mecca the way Jews did with Jerusalem. Or they might go with local solar time.

Now we have the week. this gets *really* problematic, because it's supposed to be important to take a *specific* day of the week as a day of rest. No putting it off or doing it early. It has to be *that* day.

Now, using Mars as an example, from my previous post, we know that 36 Martian sols is a bit over 37 days. Which means that you'd be taking that day of rest a day late! Not good.

Trying to stick with the earth-based week for this will be a pain. And various religious authorities *will* Have Opinions On This.

Beyond the week we've got months and various holy days (holidays) based on the year.
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Disaster

A little something that came to me the other day...

The chunk of nickel-iron spun slowly in the vacuum. As such things go there wasn't anything special about it.

It was around one hundred meters along various axes. Likely broken off some larger body far in the past.

Wherever it had originated, it was approaching an encounter with another body. Earth, the inhabitants called it.

It wasn't large enough nor moving fast enough to be a "dinosaur killer". It was going to impact at around 30 km/sec. The blast would only be ten megatons or so. Not anything of more than local importance.

Alas, due to the impact point, it was going to be a lot more than a "local" disaster.

Unfortunately for humanity, it struck almost directly above the center of the magma chamber under the Yellowstone caldera.

Not only did it blast through the cap rock, it fractured most of it. so all the pressure that had been building for thousands of years released at once. and the trapped gases in the magma turned it to ash as the massive blast the mere 10 megaton one had triggered broke the pieces of the overlying rock into smaller and smaller pieces.

They'd still be quire large enough to cause lots of damage when they came down..
So would the blast effects.

But the ash, and later steam as various rivers tried to flow back into the immense crater where the magma chamber had been were what caused the lasting damage.

Global warming wasn't going to be a concern for quite some time...