Standardized calendar in this verse? by jewelstaitefan

FIREFLY EPISODE DISCUSSIONS

Standardized calendar in this verse?

POSTED BY: JEWELSTAITEFAN
UPDATED: Wednesday, February 6, 2008 20:53
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Friday, January 18, 2008 1:29 AM

This might be a companion thread to the timeline threads in this forum, where a Standardized calendar was not discussed.

Did this verse use a Standardized calendar? Was it the same as the gregorian calendar on Earth-that-was?

Joss made all the worlds "Earth" by terraforming them and with gravity regulation. But do they all rotate on their axis at the same speed, providing the same 24 hour cycles of day/night? do they all orbit the new sun in the same number of days? Not likely.

They use the terms hours, days, noon, week, month, "end of the week", half year, year.
Is there 24 hours in a day, no matter where in the verse they are?
7 days in a week?
52 weeks in a year?
12 months in a year?

Do they standardize an adopted calendar, changing to a base10 "metric" unit system? Like 20 hours per day, 5 days per week, 30 days per month, 10 months per year?

Serenity arrives "noon" on Persephone in the Pilot, and schedules departure for 1500, 3 hours later.
We see the month October and the date 24 October in OMR.
We might assume form this that there are at least 10 months in the year, with October the 10th month. However, if standardization removes 2 months to make 10 months, then it might be more likely the 2 months removed are the last 2 months added to the calendar - January and February - returning December back to the 10th month (dec), October the 8th month (oct), September the 7th month (sept), August (renamed from Sextilis) the 6th month (sex), July (renamed form Quintilis) the 5th month (quint), etc.

has this been dicussed before?

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Friday, January 25, 2008 3:53 AM

WYTCHCROFT

there's been some discussion but no definite working through (that i've seen) - i'm interested myself in what sort of calender the Alliance would use (calenders are control systems after all) and where this would gel - or clash with the reality of various worlds...

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Sunday, January 27, 2008 7:29 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

They could have a standard calendar that everybody uses (like we refer to Greenwich Mean time, but also have our local time), and then each planet or moon has it's own local references to match up to the calendar that everybody else uses universally - the Earth-that-was calendar. Would it have all the leap years, leap seconds, etc? probably not.

An anecdotal example is where I live. I am east of the 90 degree longitudinal line, but in the Central Time zone. I can drive westerly, northerly, and within an hour be in the Eastern time zone, as well as driving 40 min east to be in the Eastern time zone. Other time confusion can be found in Indiana, and near the international date line. All these places accept the time used locally, although the sun comes up at a different time for me than it does for most - up to 2 hours difference.
As long as the worlds all agree on what they use for time, it shouldn't be a problem.

As River reminds us, "day" is not applicable. When approaching a planet and deciding whether to land on the sun (day) side, or the dark (night) side, it becomes more clear how important a standard agreement of time measurement is needed, regardless of the rotational or orbital velocities of the world.

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Monday, January 28, 2008 1:19 PM

SCHOOLBOYSWINK

In Babylon 5, for example, "Earth Standard Time" is referred to extensively, and is stated to be the time of the Earth Alliance Headquarters in Geneva. Even still, local variations are pointed out with such comments as "there is no night in space," or "it's always dark out on B5."

By the same token, a standard time is probably set based on the time of day in the capital of eiter Londinum or Sihnon. Of course, not only times, but also seasons would be different in this case. Still, every planet with settlements in more than one time zone and displaying axial tilt is going to have variation of times and seasons within its own sphere, so synching up with a standard time of day and year off-world shouldn't be too much of a transition. Every planet will have a time zone that "matches" standard time, and everbody will know which zone that is and adjust, just like I know when I see commercials for nationally televised shows here in CST, I have to subtract an hour from what they state.

Given evidence to the contrary, I think as we look at timelines we should assume that the calander is the same which we use today. Just as Chinese is spoken by almost everyone but not shown as the primary language on any of the worlds we visit, the Chinese calendar is probably still used and known by most, but is not the official calendar used by business and government.

The concept of a "leap year" would probably be included or removed from the standard calendar based on the orbital characteristics of either Londinum or Sihnon, and other planets would have to enact similar practices in order to match their annual periods to maintain some sanity, and these added or "lost" days would become part of the local customs that make each world unique. Perhaps they have celebrations with gosling juggling or sturgeon gutting competitions. On the other hand, some planets would have orbital cycles so far out of whack with the official calendar that the two could never be reconciled, like only completing an orbit once every five standard years, in which case the locals might find it pointless even to enact local calanders, since those measures of time would be so far at odds with what humans have become used to in our thousands of years of recorded history. How many people, after what has become so engrained in us over the millenia, could bring themselves as the first generation on a new planet to bury the recently-deceased first leader under a tombstone indicating that he or she died at the ripe old age of 14? I don't think many. Once the first couple generations set that standard, those that follow aren't going to go away from it without a compelling reason. They would just use the standard calendar exclusively with the understanding that it would do nothing to describe their actual astronomical or meteorological condition.

"When you can't do somethin' smart, do somethin' right!" -Jayne Cobb quotes Shepherd Book

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Monday, January 28, 2008 2:44 PM

TRAVELER

This usually comes up when someone asks when Unification Day is. I suspect the capital city must maintain a standard time that matches their own orbit. But beyond that each planet or moon will need their own calender to match their own orbit. You need to know when to plant crops and when to check their anti-freeze. So I suspect each planet has two calenders. One for their own seasonal needs and one to match the ruling planet's calender so they can all celebrate important holidays together.

So Simon's birthday may be based on the calender for his home planet or the common calender.

As was mentioned, if a planet takes several years to orbit their star they may adopt a totally different system. Maybe 36 months in a year or eight weeks per month.

I am sure it gets more confusing if you were to remember that time changes in a fast moving object like the spaceships they are using in this verse.

Thye mentioned navigation beacons in Out of Gas. There may be a prescribed frequency to send a signal to establish a standard timeline.

This is just guess work on my part. But they need to establish something or all is chaos. Of course if everyone is wasted on Mudders Milk than it really does not matter.

http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=28764731
Traveler

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Monday, January 28, 2008 7:20 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

Well, if the birthday is based upon world of birth, then the age calculation of each person is based upon their birth world. So all the women would claim to be from the slow-orbiting worlds, giving them fewer birthdays by the time they evetually reach "30".

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Tuesday, January 29, 2008 2:12 PM

TRAVELER

Quote:
Originally posted by jewelstaitefan:
Well, if the birthday is based upon world of birth, then the age calculation of each person is based upon their birth world. So all the women would claim to be from the slow-orbiting worlds, giving them fewer birthdays by the time they evetually reach "30".

I knew there had to be some advantage to to this.

Another problem would be the effects of different orbits would have on the physical body and the mind.

People who move to Alaska and are not used to continual sunlight or continual darkness will suffer side effects form the never ending days or the never ending nights. Imagine what different orbit and rotation cycles would have on a person. The Earth is tilted at about 23 Degrees. This would also vary between the planets. Some may not be tilted at all so will have no seasons as we know them.

There are probably many other diverst physical characteristics of a new planet that a person would have to become accustomed to.

http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=28764731
Traveler

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Tuesday, January 29, 2008 6:18 PM

NCBROWNCOAT

Having a "Standard" time and calendar would unify all the planets and moons of the "verse" with individual variations unique to each.

Remember, it was the railroad that insisted on "Standard time zones" on Earth-that-Was so that they could publish a schedule. Otherwise the time would vary in every town and city, throwing any attempt at saying when a train arrived into chaos. Do you use the time from the city the train started from or the time where the train arrives? The same would happen in the "Verse".

Even our astronauts on the ISS have a local "day" and "night" and use standard Earth time for measuring time despite actually having several days and nights in one standard Earth day.

Did that make any sense at all?

http://fireflyfaninnc.livejournal.com/

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Tuesday, January 29, 2008 8:11 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

It was the railroad which had one man assign time zone lines, for America. Most countries only exist in one time zone.
The U.S. railroad did not have authority over other countries.
Not arguing, just clarifying for those in other countries reading here.

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Wednesday, January 30, 2008 7:20 AM

NCBROWNCOAT

I should have made it clearer too. The US has 4 time zones, Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific. That's only the continental US. I'm not sure about the time zones for Alaska and Hawaii.

There is still a few problems though. Some states are split between two time zones. The ones that really come to mind are Indiana and Florida.

Then there's the whole daylight savings time problem. There are a few states that don't adhere to it.

Whew! Time really is a problem!

http://fireflyfaninnc.livejournal.com/

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Wednesday, February 6, 2008 1:17 PM

SCHOOLBOYSWINK

I had been thinking until this moment that seasons would be an issue for planets of varying axial tilt. As I think about it, though, this is something that might be changed through terraforming technology. After all, they can make planets of varying masses all have more or less earth gravity, so possibly they have that direct, finite control over the climate as well.

Off-topic: [It occurs to me that the terraforming devices are the one major piece of technology in Firefly that we just have to take on faith. It is never explained how they work, or if they could even exist. True, people talk about terraforming Mars, but it is very earth-like, and even then they do not talk about being able to alter the gravity. I read an article about old sci-fi once that stated that in the earliest days, the audience was only willing to give a sci-fi writer one major assumption that broke from reality. You could have faster-than-light travel or you could have sentient aliens, but not both. You could have teleportation devices or robots, but not both. As time went on, this became less and less the case as audiences were willing to give the author some staples of the genre (ftl travel, AI, aliens) for "free," and then expect only one or two deviations from THAT model (like the Force). With Firefly, though, the terraforming is the only major assumption we have to allow to make the show "work." So while in some ways it is highly innovative sci-fi, in this way it is almost going back to the genre's roots.]

"When you can't do somethin' smart, do somethin' right!" -Jayne Cobb quotes Shepherd Book

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Wednesday, February 6, 2008 8:53 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN

The seasons we know are resultant of the sun's rays (disregarding the treehuggers claim that our sun does not affect our global climate or temperature).
If the terraforming to match earth norms uses mostly varying degrees of "greenhousing", then seasons would become less resultant from solar power and irregularities. A world closer to the solar center woud need less greenhousing to allow dissipation of solar heat.
But a world farther from the solar source would have greater greenhousing to trap and retain the heat generated from the solar energies (including the heat generating processes of flora and fauna), and this would be more likely to envelope the global whole, thus negating "seasonal" effects.
So I think distance from the solar source and size of the world would determine how much greenhousing was needed to achieve Earth-norm, assuming gravity is adjusted to Earth norm. Closer to center of system would be more seasonal, farther away less seasonal.
On Earth, the closer to the equator (non-seasonal) the greater agricultural availability year-round, but the mid way (between poles and equator) regions (most seasonal) are more hospitable to advanced cities besides being only seasonal agri-use. Think of London, New York, Moscow, Chicago. I don't recall how seasonal Sydney is, sorry.

So the 2 largest worlds in this verse, Shinon and Londonium, are core, central, likely more seasonal - and "more civilized", and the outer rim are likely more agri-use, ranching, less "civilized". I've seen no mention of the 2 core planets degree of tilt, but we may assume some exists otherwise they would be highly unstable geopgraphies if they had no tilt.

Just an exposition on the thought.

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