I mean, this is the real answer here, but you can’t just put them on UTC because of the relativity like we were discussing elsewhere, so it would still have to be a separate time zone for programming and timekeeping purposes, even if humans won’t be able to tell the difference
It’s been a long time since I took modern physics, so I’m not positive, but I think you’re right that the moon would have time moving slower, and if your 50ms/day is right (edit: I based this on the moon traveling faster than the earth, but I don’t know anything about gravitational relativity, so that’s probably wrong) then you’d need to do something like skip a second every 20th day on the moon to keep pace with Earth. We could call it an “anti-leap-second”
Programmers, that seems pretty simple; what’s the big deal? /s
No, the moon’s rotation isn’t on a 24-hour cycle. I’m not an astronomer, but I pretty sure since it’s tidally locked to earth and on a 28-day cycle around the earth, a lunar day is actually 28 Earth days, but I’m not actually sure how that would factor into the number of time zones (I’m pretty sure it would be more complicated than just 24 time zones to match 24 time zones on earth, though).
Plus, I think the speed of the moon relative to the sun is different enough from Earth that you need to take relativity into effect, which is the real headache here.
Not quite. In each observer’s frame of reference, time appears to pass the same; it’s only when you try to reconcile the between two objects that are not at rest with respect to each other does relativity show up.
Basically, when you bring someone back to Earth, the observers will find that their watches don’t match up even though both observers experience time passing the same way as normal (because the oberserver is by definition at rest with respect to their own frame of reference).
TL; DR: Relativity is a pain in the ass and makes no sense in everyday terms.
edit: disclaimer - I am not a physicist and have not taken physics classes in a decade plus, but I do teach science at a college. I’m going mostly on half-remembered lectures and some random one-off discussions I’ve had with my buddy in the physics department over the past few years.