On Wed, Feb 17, 2016 at 2:47 AM, Greg Chalik <mrg3105@gmail.com> wrote:

Never see any mention of it, but my guess is there are time zones in the Imperium just as there are on worlds within it.

Time zones were an artificial construct of the early industrial era, created in order to match up the moment at which the sun is highest in the sky as seen from a particular locale with by-the-clock noon. They were created largely at the behest of the railroad companies and remain in use because that's how everyone is now used to regarding time.

In an interstellar society the position of the sun as seen from the surface of any particular point on any particular planet has ZERO bearing on how fusion-powered spacecraft using gravitic lift function. Therefore, time zones are a planetary phenomenon and thus meaningless to the Imperium.

And before you bring it up, Daylight Savings Time would have even less applicability to the Imperium, since it was designed to adjust the working day of field laborers in an agrarian society . . .

I actually wonder if Time will still exist in the shape of the consept as we know it.
It isn't particularly useful in contemporary cities already.

I presume you are referring to "cities which never sleep?" Because they can operate under artificial lights, on a 24-hour cycle? Then why the apparent amazement below, when I mention the EXACT SAME THING in the context of the 24-hour Imperial day? Are you really that obtuse?

Cheers

Greg

On 17 February 2016 at 15:15, Richard Aiken <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 8:19 PM, Greg Chalik <mrg3105@gmail.com> wrote:

On 17 February 2016 at 10:36, Richard Aiken <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Feb 16, 2016 at 2:53 PM, Greg Chalik <mrg3105@gmail.com> wrote:
Synchronise planetary orbits also?

The Imperium ignores individual planetary time, clocking everything on Sylean (e.g. Imperial) time. This drives the locals crazy, of course.

Drives them crazy literally

I'm going to assume this is a joke?
I thought the use of "everything" was a joke. Its one of those big words.

And "everything" applies completely in this context. The Imperial Office of Calendar Compliance is canon.

Just in case it isn't, I guess I should spell out just what my above statement was meant to imply:

When I said "the Imperium ignores individual planetary time," I did NOT mean that individual Imperials on an actual planet - let alone the locals themselves thereon - will necessarily ignore planetary time. I simply meant that anything officially Imperial will be time/date stamped using Imperial time, never local time.
Well, sure. If a message is dispatched from the Core, it will be automatically time/date-stamped.
As will be its receipt...in local lime.

[Imagining for just a moment a local starport clock constructed to resemble an enormous LIME . . .]

NO.

Receipt is recorded in Imperial time BY THE IMPERIUM, otherwise you couldn't tell how long the message took to arrive.

The locals might well record receipt in local time for their own local purposes, but that has nothing to do with the Imperium.

Whenever translation between Imperial and local time becomes important, there will be all sorts of automated means - such as mobile phone aps - to enable easy conversion back and forth.
Something tells me that mobile phone apps will be known only to professors of VERY ancient history

So there are no TL 7-8 worlds in your Traveller Universe? Tech progression skips right from World War Two tech straight to early fusion?

Telling the time is not . . .

[snip of time zone irrelevances]

Day/night cycles will be maintained by whatever means are easiest in the particular situation. If the natural situation is fairly close to Sylean-normal, then no adjustments are normally made to people's behavior.
Fairly close?
How many worlds in the Imperium have identical orbits to the Sylean?

[shakes head at this particularly silly straw man, but decides to take it seriously, since the poster honest appear confused . . . ]

"Fairly close" - for those with reading comprehension difficulties - means "close enough to a 24-hour cycle to allow the human body to biologically adapt with no difficulty."

But if the divergence is enough to prevent easy acclimitization/adaptation, then humans (both local and Imperial) will live under conditions of artificial illumination that closely mimics a Sylean-normal day.
?!

[Once more, in a slightly different format, for the comprehension-challenged . . .]

If the difference is too much to adapt to - for example, the world rotates very slowly, with a day length that's a standard week long - then a human colony will simply ignore the local day/night cycle. The colony will run on a normal 24 hour cycle, under artificial lighting. For example, sleeping quarters will be built without windows, so that workers can go to sleep without difficulty whenever their "personal night" comes around. In our real world, artic and antartic stations already do this.

Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident." Robert A. Heinlein

"I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as Muhammed." Alexis de Tocqueville (1843)

"We know a little about a lot of things; just enough to make us dangerous." Dean Winchester

"It has been my experience that a gun doesn't care who pulls its trigger." Newton Knight (as portrayed by Matthew McConaughey), to a scoffing Confederate tax collector facing the weapons held by Knight's young children and wife.