Like in many speculative fiction involving other worlds, the issue of time comes up in Innocence Seekers. A fair amount of speculative fiction often handwaves this issue, or ignores it entirely, by postulating that the other world has exactly the same length of day and year as Earth. Of course, it is implausible that any planet or fantasy world would have a solar day lasting exactly 86,400 seconds and a tropical year lasting exactly 365.2425 days (the average annual duration of the Gregorian calendar), or even worse, exactly 365.25 days (the Julian calendar, now only used in astronomy and by the Eastern Orthodox Church). If Earth did not exist in the setting, then the length of day is a non-issue, as there is no Earth to give its definition of the second (in which case a calendar can be simply made up). This blog post will detail how time is kept throughout the planets of the galaxy.
General
Before I go into detail on the timekeeping systems of each planet, I will mention space exploration. Space exploration comes with its own timekeeping problems, as obviously there are no seasons, sun or moon to keep track of time (okay, there may be a sun, but the ship is either not rotating or rotating too fast). While it is possible for each individual ship to determine its own timekeeping system, when two ships or fleets of ships encounter each other and attempt communication or transfer, they must agree on their timekeeping systems. To ease agreement, the Federation of Four Earths has devised a system where ships follow a set timekeeping system depending on their location within the galaxy. For locations within 40 parsecs of a secondary waystone (I’ll mention the types of waystones in a later post), the timekeeping system used on the planet housing the waystone is used (or the closest one, if there are at least two). For example, for locations near Earth, this is Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), which in astrogation is defined by the Federation of Four Earths to be equivalent to Universal Time 1 (UT1); note that Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) can also be used as UTC and UT1 differ by no more than 0.9 seconds. For “unexplored” locations (including areas not within 40 parsecs of a secondary waystone), Terrestrial Time (TT) is used in combination with Julian dates.
One of the main issues with timekeeping in the Innocence Seekers universe is the fact that the lengths of the days are different. For example, the solar day on Mars is around 88,775.244 seconds, while on Earth it is 86,400.002 seconds. More importantly, the “default” length of day the human body uses is a bit over 24 hours, meaning that civilian days should be chosen so that the day’s length is somewhere between 23 to 25 hours. Regardless of the length of the day, the durations of the local hour, minute and second must be adjusted so that an hour is 1/24 of a day (in order to simplify assignment of time zones); leap seconds are allowed, though. For the year, it is traditional to split the year into 12 or 24 months; it is a coincidence that the new moon to new moon time length for all four “main” planets is a bit less than a twelfth of the tropical year. The names for these months may be based on the Gregorian calendar’s month names, the zodiac signs, or simply numbers.
The issue of weeks and weekdays opens up an entirely new can of worms. I shouldn’t need to mention this, but the two most widespread religions on Earth regard the seven-day week (and particular days of the week) as important. Which begs the question: can a religiously significant seven-day week be transferred without adjustments to a timekeeping system where the civilian day is half the length of the solar day? Or to a calendar system which skips days of the week for purposes of simplicity? Or to space, where timekeeping is largely arbitrary? What about communication or travel between planets, where the planets are often on different days of the week? For Innocence Seekers, the different calendars often have weekdays which do not match at a particular point in time, but this is a consequence of the days being different durations. Nevertheless, all of them use a seven-day week.
For convenience, I denote time based on Earth time. Because of the complications of transitioning between time systems, I won’t put explicit dates in my stories (although I will put dates of important events on the events’ wiki articles).
Earth
- Solar day: 24 h 00 m 00.002 s (86,400.002 s)
- Tropical year: 365.2422 solar days (31,556,925 s)
- Number of natural satellites: 1
- Synodic period of satellite: 29.5306 solar days (2,551,442.9 s)
- Prime meridian: Royal Observatory, Greenwich, London, United Kingdom
- Primary time standard: Universal Coordinated Time (UTC), Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)
I won’t say much about Earth; most of the information is already there, on the Internet. However, I will mention that I will give the solar day to three decimal places and the tropical year to four.
Ocypsa
- Solar day: 23 h, 48 m, 41.883 s (85,721.883 s)
- Tropical year: 322.8073 solar days (27,671,650 s)
- Number of natural satellites: 1
- Synodic period of satellite: 25.9382 solar days (2,223,469.8 s)
- Prime meridian: Kura Observatory, Kura, Cedysna City, Cedysna
- Primary time standard: Kura Standard Time
The standard calendar used on Ocypsa consists of a cycle of five years, with every fifth year containing 322 days and all other years containing 323 days. This gives an average year of 322.8 days. Since, of course this is not accurate enough (after all, 365.25 was not accurate enough on Earth either), there are more complex rules to give an average year of 322.8075 days. The principal rule is that every year divisible by 100 but not by 400 is also a “leap year” containing 323 days.
Unlike the seemingly arbitrary position of the Gregorian calendar’s first day, the Ocypsan calendar’s first day is traditionally the northern hemisphere’s vernal equinox (i.e. the “beginning” of spring in the northern hemisphere); of course, the actual equinox shifts around. The twelve months are named after the signs of the zodiac (beginning with Aries), although the Gregorian names beginning with March can be used. Each month has 27 days, with the exception of Virgo/August and Pisces/February, which have 26. On “leap years”, which are actually the majority, Pisces has 27 days.
A side note: Kura Standard Time is the time zone of Cedysna City. Nodaima City and Fleflua uses Nodaima Standard Time, which is one hour ahead.
Fuenod
- Solar day: 24 h, 41 m, 33.280 s (88,893.280 s)
- Tropical year: 429.3671 solar days (38,167,850 s)
- Number of natural satellites: 1
- Synodic period of sattelite: 34.3821 solar days (3,056,337.5 s)
- Prime meridian: Sunahara Observatory, Akaishi, Likkra
- Primary time standard: Sunahara Standard Time
The fractional part of the duration of the Fuenodian year complicated the search for a suitable calendar. The calendar used consisted of two cycles. The 25-year cycle used nine leap years for each cycle (giving an average year of 429.36 days), while the 1000-year cycle placed seven additional leap years (giving an average of 429.367 days). The 25-year cycle placed leap years at years 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 15, 18, 21 and 24 of the cycle, while the 1000-year cycle placed additional leap years at years 100, 200, 400, 500, 700, 800 and 1000 of the cycle.
The Fuenodian calendar begins two months before the northern hemisphere’s vernal equinox (so the first day of the third month is the vernal equinox) and consists of twelve months. As Namari was the centre of Fuenodian astronomy, the months are named after the traditional Japanese names for the months. However, one can use Gregorian names (beginning with January) or the signs of the zodiac (beginning with Aquarius). Nine of the twelve months have 36 days, while the other three, the fourth (Uzuki), eighth (Hazuki) and final months (Shiwasu), have 35 days. Leap years make the final month 36 days.
A side note: Sunahara Standard Time is not the time zone of either Likkra’s or Namari’s capital. Haguya uses Haguya Standard Time, which is one hour behind Sunahara Standard Time, and Yaezora uses Yaezora Standard Time, which is one hour ahead. Chiyohara Standard Time (used in Chiyohara) is three hours ahead of Sunahara Standard Time.
That’s all I’ll say for now. I would talk about Elrodom, except I haven’t paid much attention to it.
P.S. I only found out just now (considering that the manga in question is fairly obscure), but happy birthday to Yūko Yoshida of Machikado Mazoku. On an unrelated note, the manga’s author, Izumo Itō, drew this support illustration for the Magic of Stella adaptation.
P.P.S. Talking about birthdays, they are another issue with regards to timekeeping in the Innocence Seekers universe. In general, a character in the setting has several birthdays, one for each planet.