Another Calendar / Time Thread.

[jcrocker]

So, by syncing clock to an agreed-upon pulsar, both the Imperium and the Terries would have the same reference.

But would the Imperium base their second on a sub-multiple of 1,000,663,527,397 pulses while the Terries base theirs on a sub-multiple of 1,000,000,000,000 pulses from the same pulsar?

I've never read anything about a conversion factor for Imperial seconds or Solomani seconds. The joke about the Solomani second being larger goes here.

With all of the units in physics based upon seconds, if they're not the same, you'd be running conversions for every darn thing.

Which may or may not matter, depending how devoted your world was to the Solomani Cause. "Only Impie-loving backsliders use metric. We use something pure, ancient, and undeniably Solomani - feet! Pounds! Inches! The Imperial System!!"

 

[Enoki]

I'm with the Soli's here! One should always measure their favorite imbibing concoctions in hogsheads and barrels, and the Saybolt Universal Constant is to be revered! When your neighbor asks, how much you weigh these days, you should be able to proudly answer "Fifteen stone." :rofl:

 

[Reban]

But would the Imperium base their second on a sub-multiple of 1,000,663,527,397 pulses while the Terries base theirs on a sub-multiple of 1,000,000,000,000 pulses from the same pulsar?

Seconds are SI units.

Traveller uses other SI units throughout its rules and background.

I can see SI units becoming "Imperial" units after a few centuries, but I can't see them moving to two units named the same thing but with different values.

We have excellent examples of what happens to spacecraft when NASA mixes metric and Imperial units in our own century: tiny bits of spacecraft impacting on Mars.

Now if you suggested that the future basic Imperial unit of time measurement was called something other than a second.... that might make some sense.

 

[Condottiere]

Ideology would compel the Confederation to use the Terran solar year as the fundamental time period.

The Imperium uses it for the players' convenience.

 

[TheDS]

I seem to recall that if you did the math on the dates given in the Imperial Encyclopedia, you would find there was no simple "+x" to add to one date to get another, that what you added depended on the year range, because of the difference in year lengths of 1/4 day. However, this might instead have been because there is no year 0 on Earth, or if 1/1 on Earth calendar doesn't correspond to 1/1 Imperial calendar (meaning "+x" isn't a whole number, as assumed).

Clearly, I didn't do the math sufficiently well, but I don't recall ever having reason to think the second or day were defined differently.

 

[JimMarn]

Adjusting seconds could be tricky... more than once, over several decades, I have seen the ball drop at Times Square change due to the addition or subtraction of a second so it matches the changes in the Earth's rotation speed.