Life on Mars
Thursday, April 12, 2007 at 9:00 PM | Filed under grammar/usage, mystery
It's interesting to think that some day, we will all move to Mars and set up colonies and form civilizations. But there's a problem about living on Mars that's worrying me. It's a problem of terms and definitions.
For example, when the Martian ground starts shaking, what are we going to scream? We can't scream "Earthquake!", can we? It's not Earth that's shaking, it's Mars! So we'll call it a "Marsquake"? I doubt it'll catch on. Maybe we'll just call them "quakes" to avoid the whole issue.
Another problem would be what we consider a "year" to be. Sure, a Martian day and an Earth day are close enough in length, but a Martian year is almost twice as long as ours. So we'd have January through December, but we'd need to invent like 10 more months to fill the remaining room. And birthdays? Your birthday would occur only about half as often as on Earth, so you wouldn't get as much cake and presents, and your life expectancy would be cut to about 40. That would suck.
For example, when the Martian ground starts shaking, what are we going to scream? We can't scream "Earthquake!", can we? It's not Earth that's shaking, it's Mars! So we'll call it a "Marsquake"? I doubt it'll catch on. Maybe we'll just call them "quakes" to avoid the whole issue.
Another problem would be what we consider a "year" to be. Sure, a Martian day and an Earth day are close enough in length, but a Martian year is almost twice as long as ours. So we'd have January through December, but we'd need to invent like 10 more months to fill the remaining room. And birthdays? Your birthday would occur only about half as often as on Earth, so you wouldn't get as much cake and presents, and your life expectancy would be cut to about 40. That would suck.
