India, Sept. 16 -- Ask anyone on Earth what the current time is, and they can tell you in a jiffy. Across the planet, highly accurate clocks help maintain a common standard for measuring time. Mars, however, is a different story.

As conditions differ between the two planets, clocks on Mars do not keep time at the same rate as clocks on Earth. Scientists have now examined this difference in detail, comparing the passage of time on Mars with that on Earth.

A team of physicists at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology set out to answer a deceptively simple question: what time is it on Mars? Their findings, detailed in a paper titled A Comparative Study of Time on Mars with Lunar and Terrestrial Clocks in The Astronomical Jo...