Ghati to Seconds (ghati to s)

1 ghati equals 1,440 seconds exactly.

1 ghati = 1,440 seconds

How to convert ghati to seconds

To convert ghati to seconds, multiply the number of ghati by 1,440. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply seconds by 0.0006944444444 (rounded).

seconds = ghati × 1,440

Example: 10 ghati = 14,400 seconds.

Months and years are not constant. This site uses the average Gregorian year of 365.2425 days, so one 'year' converts to 365.2425 days, not 365; use 'common year' for exactly 365 days.

About these units

Ghati (ghati)

Indian subcontinentHistorical unit (no longer in standard use)

24 minutes, one sixtieth of a day. A traditional Indian unit of time, kept alive mainly in astrology and traditional timekeeping.

Sixty ghatis, also written ghati or ghatika, fill one day and night in traditional Indian reckoning, so each lasts 24 minutes. Astronomical texts such as the Surya Siddhanta divide it further, with 60 vighati in a ghati. Wikipedia's table lists the pala at about 24 seconds, though it marks the sidereal table as failing verification, so the finer subdivisions should be treated with care.

The ghati fits into larger units in a simple way. Two ghatis make a muhurta, and 7.5 ghatis make the three-hour yama that appears in the tropical table.

The unit survives mainly in astrology and in writing about traditional timekeeping. The figure used here is the plain 24-minute ghati, one sixtieth of a 24-hour day.

1 ghati = 1,440 seconds (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Hindu units of time; Wikipedia: Muhurta

Second (s)

Metric (SI)Current unit

The SI base unit of time, defined by the radiation frequency of the cesium-133 atom: 9,192,631,770 cycles per second.

Our word second is a leftover of Latin. Medieval scholars divided a degree, and later the hour, into 60 parts called pars minuta prima, the first small part, and divided those again into pars minuta secunda, the second small part. NIST traces the roots further back: Babylonian and Greek astronomers split the circle into 360 degrees, and around 150 C.E. Ptolemy split each degree into 60 minutes and each minute into 60 seconds. Clocks that could show seconds appeared only in the later 16th century, and Christiaan Huygens's pendulum clock of 1656 was the first able to keep time accurately to the second.

For most of history the second was a fraction of a day, and in 1956 it was redefined as a fraction of the tropical year, a definition the SI took over in 1960. In 1967 the 13th CGPM switched to atoms: 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation tied to a hyperfine transition of caesium-133. The 2019 SI revision restated this by fixing the caesium frequency at 9,192,631,770 hertz. NIST reports that commercial caesium clocks stay within about a three-millionth of a second per year, and experimental clocks based on other atoms are roughly ten thousand times more precise.

The second is the reference unit for time on this site.

Sources: NIST: the second and the SI redefinition; BIPM: SI Brochure, 9th edition; Wikipedia: Second

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