Universal Universe Time: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

In most science fiction stories, although it is an issue that is seldom even touched upon, it appears that the entire Universe uses the same timekeeping and calendar system as Earth - years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds, etc. Most planets also apparently experience a day/night cycle that is practically identical to that of Earth.

 

To learn more, visit the [[Universal Universe Time/Analysis|analysis page.]]

 

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* Averted in ''[[Aria]]'', which takes place on a terraformed Mars called Aqua, they explicitly mention Aqua's longer year.

* Averted in ''[[Galaxy Express 999]]''. It's an important plot point at times - the 999 stops for whatever constitutes a 'day' on each station's planet, and then leaves, missing passengers be damned. This is explained to the protagonist as early as the second episode of the series.

* Apparently played straight in ''[[Legend of the Galactic Heroes]],'' wherein ''the entire Milky Way Galaxy'' seems to operate on one standardized time zone.

 

== [[Film]] ==

* In ''[[Men in Black (film)|Men in Black]]'', they work on a 37-hour alien day, and a "week" is about an hour.

** A galactic standard week is an hour, yes. But the 37-hour day is a specific alien culture's time system—presumably the first species MIB encountered.

 

== [[Literature]] ==

** More or less ignored as the series grows more complex and the [[Techno Babble]] is replaced with political intrigue.

* Averted in the [[Vorkosigan Saga]], where characters at least occasionally mention things like it being "18:00 hours of a 26.7 hour day [on this particular planet]".

* Played straight for the most part in Andrey Livadny's ''[[The History of the Galaxy]]'' books, where everyone in the [[The Federation|Confederacy of Suns]] uses the same years. Months and days are, conveniently, almost never mentioned. The years are, of course, standard Earth years, even though Earth isn't even a part of the Confederacy thanks to [[The War of Earthly Aggression]] that led to the [[The Empire|Earth Alliance]] being defeated by the [[The Alliance|Free Colonies]], which re-formed into the Confederacy.

** Subverted in one novel where an alien supercomputer asks how long it has been off-line, and a human replies that it has been over 3 million years, causing the computer to prompt for the definition of a "year". The human defines it as one full orbit around a star, prompting the computer to ask for further clarification as to the parameters of such an orbit. This stumps the human, as she has never thought of this. The computer then simply searches her mind and finds enough information about Earth to scan its own database for it. Of course, this fails to take into account that the database is 3 million years old, and Earth's orbit has changed since then.

* An egregious example on the ''[[Mystery Science Theater 3000]]''-featured ''King Dinosaur'': The scientists exploring planet Nova decide to use Earth time ''despite'' knowing that Nova's day-night cycle is likely different.

* ''[[Star Trek]]'' averted it with their stardates, which were totally made-up with no regard to consistency between episodes. This is supposed to be because of differences in time dilation and related [[Techno Babble]] at whatever area the ship happens to be at.

* In ''[[Doctor Who]],'' the Daleks measure time in "rels." One rel is slightly longer than a second, close enough to do the trick.

* In ''[[Firefly]]'', River points out that the use of "day" as a time measurement is obsolete, as they are part of a spacefaring civilization spread across hundreds of worlds. This is largely because she didn't get Simon anything for his birthday. Still, her view, like most of her views, appears to be unusual since everybody else celebrates Simon's birthday with no question (well, until the ship malfunctions and nearly kills everybody). Apparently, Earth time is still used for simplicity's sake.

* Played with in ''[[Farscape]]''. Rather than use Earth time measurements, they use space equivalents - an "arn" is an hour, a "microt" is a second, and (once or twice) a week is referred to as a "weeken". However, on many occasion someone will mention a length of time known as a "Solar Day" - which is supposed to be one day. This may seem odd considering nobody on the show (short of the main character) has ever even heard of Earth and the term "Solar" refers to Earth's sun, Sol.

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* ''[[Starslip]]'' averts this when the main character declares he sets his clock by whichever star he's closest to, which in real life would actually be pretty difficult ("I'm late for my appointment at 6! Thousand!").

* ''[[Unity]]'' uses its own ship-local time, based on ''sec'', ''kaysec'' (1000 secs), ''deci'' (10 kaysecs), ''day'' (10 decis), ''dec'' (5 days), and ''round'' (5 decs). They also consider a ''tenround'' (10 rounds) as a standard-ish unit of temporal demarcation. The actual calendar is just a decimal count (1.000 = 1 day) based on some arbitrary time period without any in-ship time zones, as relative intervals are more important than absolute points in time. Absolutely no attempt is made at dealing with external time references, but without any FTL travel or communication, there's no need for it either. And, the day of the dec is simply the current day value modulo 5; the days are, thus, called "onesday," "twosday," "threesday," "foursday," and "fivesday."

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Artistic License Physics]]

[[Category:Did Not Do the Research]]

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]

[[Category:Space Does Not Work That Way]]