#how to standardize timekeeping between planets

[ceaseless-rambler]

The Moon Kaiser is actually kind of terrible at being a military leader. A weapon that could win the war with no threat of mutually assured destruction, just sitting in the room where he met with prisoners and also probably did anything personal because the place he slept was right there, and that could also be pointed directly at the ground. My guy what were you thinking. How did it take him that long to die. Why was he not overthrown by other people up in the chain of command, because if none of them had any sort of strategic ability at all they would've lost the war years ago. Maybe someone was trying to get the Kaiser killed by an enemy so they could take over without suspicion? But surely it wouldn't have taken that long

[gladstones-corner]

Planetary Days and Hours - Commentary

If you're familiar with planetary magic, you may have seen the Table of Planetary Hours. It's usually split into two--one for day and one for night.

Designed to help magicians time their rituals and spells for best results, the tables usually look something like this:

Despite the fact that I use these tables semi-regularly, I never cared to take a dive into their mechanics until recently.

For that reason, today we're going to talk about planetary hours and how they're calculated. 

Let's start with the classical order of the planets. This method, which reaches back to Hellenistic times, is based on how fast the seven classical planets appear to move through the sky. It's become the de facto standard and is called the Chaldean Order. It goes as follows:

Sun 

Venus 

Mercury 

Moon 

Saturn 

Jupiter 

Mars 

How do we use it? Let's take an example.

To make things easy, let's choose Sunday. Its ruling planet is the Sun first on the list. To calculate planetary hours, we need to find the number of minutes between Sunday's sunrise and sunset, then divide by 12. This gives us the length (in minutes) of a single daytime planetary hour.

We repeat this process for the minutes between Sunday's sunset and Monday's sunrise. This gives us the length of a single nighttime planetary hour. With the exception of Equinoxes, the lengths of a daytime and nighttime hour will differ. 

Why divide by 12 and not, say, 7 for the number of planets? The simplest and most practical answer I can give is two-fold: 

12 allows 24 full cycles of planetary hours across seven days, allowing us to continually loop back to the Sun on Sunday.

Using 12 makes for cleaner timekeeping without fractional minutes. 

Alright, so we have the theory out of the way. Let's continue with our Sunday example to plot out the planetary hours.

For easiest math, let's say this particular Sunday is an Equinox. Say that sunrise is at 07:00, sunset is 12 hours later at 19:00, and Monday's sunrise is the following morning at 07:00. 

Daytime Hours 

19 – 7 = 12 (this tells us the number of hours) 

12 * 60 = 720 (this tells us the number of minutes) 

720 / 12 = 60 (this tells us how long each hour is) 

Nighttime Hours 

19 – 7 = 12 (Sunday's sunset minus Monday's sunrise) 

12 * 60 = 720 

720 / 12 = 60 

For the Sunday Equinox, the Daytime and Nighttime hours will both be 60 minutes each. 

Now we assign the planets in Chaldean order, starting with Sunday's ruling planet: 

Daytime Astrological Hours 

07:00 – Sun  

08:00 – Venus  

09:00 �� Mercury  

10:00 – Moon  

11:00 – Saturn  

12:00 – Jupiter  

13:00 – Mars  

14:00 – Sun  

15:00 – Venus  

16:00 – Mercury  

17:00 – Moon  

18:00 – Saturn  

Nighttime Astrological Hours 

19:00 – Jupiter  

20:00 – Mars  

21:00 – Sun  

22:00 – Venus  

23:00 – Mercury  

00:00 – Moon  

01:00 – Saturn  

02:00 – Jupiter  

03:00 – Mars  

04:00 – Sun  

05:00 – Venus 

06:00 – Mercury 

Notice that Mercury is the final planetary hour for Sunday. If you look at the Chaldean Order, the next planet on the list is the Moon. If you take a look at the table above, you can see that the Moon is Monday's ruling planet. This means we can simply continue ordering the planets without any interruption or overlap.

This is true all the way to Saturday, whose final hour on the nighttime table is Mars. This means that for the first planetary hour on Sunday, we would assign the Sun. This means that each day's ruling planet will never change, producing this correspondence list:  

Sunday: Sun 

Monday: Moon 

Tuesday: Mars 

Wednesday: Mercury 

Thursday: Jupiter 

Friday: Venus 

Saturday: Saturn 

Okay, sweet. We've figured out how the table is put together. But what are the uses of such a table? What can we do with planetary hours?

Simply put, the planetary energies add a little extra power to your magic. A thorough grounding in astrology is not required, but a familiarity with each classical planet helps. 

At an orbital level (pun not intended), this is a description for each planet: 

Sun: 

Planet of consciousness and outward expression. 

Rules over vitality, ego, self-expression, leadership, and creativity. 

Influences success, visibility, and personal growth. 

Venus: 

Planet of love and pleasure. 

Rules over love, art, beauty, adornment, decoration, social graces, affection, harmony, and friendship. 

Influences the higher emotions. 

Mercury: 

Planet of intellectual energy, mental activity, and communication. 

Rules over intelligence, perception, reason, memory, speaking, and writing. 

Influences the way you see, hear, understand, and assimilate information. 

Moon: 

Planet of the unconscious and inward expression. 

Rules over emotions, intuition, and receptivity. 

Influences healing, creativity, intuition, and nurture. 

Saturn: 

Planet of responsibility, diligence, self-control, limitation. 

Rules over patience, stability, maturity, and realism. 

Influences trial and difficulty, especially that which challenges and strengthens character. 

Jupiter: 

Planet of good luck, optimism, success, and generosity. 

Rules over knowledge, higher learning, vision, honesty, joy, and abundance. 

Influences a willingness to partake of life, gathering new experiences, expanding, and how to get the best out of life. 

Mars: 

Planet of physical energy. 

Rules over energy, boldness, willpower, sex drive, forcefulness, and aggression. 

Influences action, ambition, desire, courage, and strength. 

At the end of the day, this manual calculation is helpful for knowing the theory behind why it works, but you don't have to manually calculate planetary hours every day. There are several apps that do this for you. My favorite is Time Nomad for iOS, as the home screen widgets tell you pretty much all you need to know: 

And that's really it for my commentary on planetary hours!

As always, thank you for reading. Blessed be~

[themculibrary]

Loki/Mobius Masterlist 2

part one

A New Reality (ao3) - kickcowsE, 39k

Summary: Loki finds himself stuck in a new branch of reality, and seeks guidance from the one person he knows will help him - Mobius. 

A Well-Made Mistake (ao3) - Springandastorm loki/mobius, valkryie/sylvie M, 36k

Summary: The existence of the Sacred Timeline is predicated upon the divine judgement of the Time-Keepers, untangling the threads of everything that could happen until they've decided what does happen. 

Things don't always go according to their plan, though.

Something seemed to dawn on Loki, his eyes widening slowly. "Tell me we aren't where I think we are, Mobius."

"Where do you think we are?"

"...Sakaar?"

"In that case, I can't tell you we aren't where you think we are."

Borrowed Faith (ao3) - kcscribbler T, 2k

Summary: Decades into his quest for a solution to the impending Loom meltdown, Loki begins using a Memory Cell to give himself an occasional, brief respite from the chaos.

He Speaks Daggers (ao3) - oprime, zerospoons_onlyknives (oprime) E, 59k

Summary: “Come on. I’m terrible with this.”

Mobius waves the dagger around wildly as if to prove his point.

“That’s why you need to practice.” Loki steps forward, ducking under the swinging arc of the dagger, to adjust Mobius’s grip on the hilt. “Stop holding it like a toddler.”

“You give knives to toddlers!?”

“It’s a dagger and I got my first one when I was two and a half.”

“Yeah, and your upbringing is the standard by which all should be measured.”

OR

Loki commits to teaching Mobius self-defense and gets a little more than he bargained for. (An alternate take on S2:E2 just for fun.)

like vines we interwined (ao3) - thumbbird E, 8k

Summary: “This isn’t a game,” he said, catching his breath.

Mobius coughed. His eyes crinkled and his hand squeezed Loki’s shoulder. “No, but I’m having fun anyway.”

Loki huffed. “You’re ridiculous.”

“You love it,” Mobius said with a weak smile.

(Or the one where Loki and Mobius track a variant to a planet full of killer plants and one of them decides to make Mobius its next meal… unless Loki can figure out how to free him).

Misaligned (ao3) - thunderously_halo T, 2k

Summary: After fixing his time slipping issue with Mobius, Loki isn't quite aligned with time. He refuses to rest and suffers the consequences.

Miserable Lonely Life (ao3) - art_ro_vert G, 1k

Summary: “He is in love with you," Sylvie said suddenly, ruining the comfortable silence that hung between them. She placed her mug on the table with a loud thud, catching Mobius’ attention and making him look up from where he was sitting across the table.

“What?”

“Loki!” Sylvie specified helpfully. “He is in love with you!” she stated louder this time, with desperation in her voice like she was declaring the truth that everyone had been ignoring for years.

Nail your colors to the mast (ao3) - TheMissingMask N/R, 26k

Summary: Mobius talks to a Loki he knows will never come back. Sometimes he gets an answer.

Post-S2 fix-it

of glory and goddesses (ao3) - loosethreadsofyoursoul T, 35k

Summary: “We’re no longer destined to lose.” Sylvie's voice is just a whisper, but Loki hears her despite the chaos around them trying to drown her out. “Don’t you want to know who you could be? Don’t you want the chance to live a story you can write?”

-

When the Loom is destroyed, Loki isn't the one to replace it. Instead he's left to deal with the aftermath in the form of a restructured TVA, a frazzled analyst, and a blank space where his own glorious purpose used to be.

On a Wing and a Prayer (ao3) - lydiagwilt T, 33k

Summary: The words spilled out unbidden, before Mobius had time to think about what he was doing or what the implications might be. Heyr þessi prayer ek pray, loki trickster, fire, ok vinr, hvere þú eru haileð með love…

Mobius had never thought of himself as religious, not really; but now that his faith in the Timekeepers had been shattered, he found he desperately needed something – someone – to believe in.

He believed in Loki. He always had.

Or, Mobius is imprisoned by a sinister alternate TVA and prays to Loki for help. Loki hears him.

Queer Eye for the Sad Suburban Guy (ao3) - mistbored T, 13k

Summary: The Queer Eye crew are on their latest mission to help yet another person in need. Don is a down-on-his-luck dad who is having trouble adjusting to some big life changes recently. He also might be suffering from hallucinations, but it’s hard to say for sure….

Reacclimate (ao3) - blackbirdofasgard G, 1k

Summary: Everyone—B-15, Casey, and O.B.—had been so excited to see Loki back in their company, beyond relieved that their plan had worked. But seeing that Loki needed more time to adjust, they'd returned to the TVA, leaving him to Mobius, who patiently waited while Loki stood there and took in everything he'd been missing for so long.

After Loki is released from the heart of the multiverse tree, he takes some time to appreciate everything around him. Even the less-than-perfect things.

Six Feet Closer (ao3) - lonelyhourglass47 T, 11lk

Summary: Loki and Mobius get stuck in quarantine together for a minimum of two weeks. Loki likes to mess with Mobius. They both have repressed feelings for each other.

Or, five times Loki falls asleep in Mobius' bed and one time Mobius asks him to.

the absence of green (ao3) - pinkpeachtea T, 135k

Summary: Mobius didn't like the color green anymore. It should have been silly, really, but he couldn't help it. It was enough to go outside, see the grass and the trees, to be reminded of Loki. But it didn't even start, or end, there.

——— Or, Mobius tries to build a life for himself and move on. That is until Loki randomly shows up at his doorstep one day and asks for his help. But helping Loki means assisting him in leaving Mobius again and Mobius isn’t sure if he can handle another missed goodbye.

Too bad Loki has to stay at Mobius’ place until they figure things out.

the end is where we start from (ao3) - Insert_Witty_User_Name_Here G, 6k

Summary: It’s cold at the end of time. Not technically. It’s not technically anything at the end of time. It’s not warm, not cold. There’s no day and no night, no changing of seasons. But it feels cold. Loki can’t quite explain why.

It’s a cold that seeps into every fiber of his being until eventually… he’s numb. Which is easier, he supposes, in a way.

Or Loki loses himself to the stories of Yggdrasil. Luckily, Mobius and Sylvie are there to bring him back. A post season two reunion fic.

Time Passes, Come Closer Now (ao3) - rumblebee M, 50k

Summary: Mobius M. Mobius goes on a little adventure with unexpected results.

Loki laments and gets into interior design.

Both of them spend too much time remembering.

time will pass, darling (but my feelings, they won't) (ao3) - burnthatbridge M, 15k

Summary: Loki looks down and Mobius sees his throat move as he swallows around the pain of what he has to stay. “I need to go now.”

Mobius tightens his grip on Loki’s forearms, wants to rail against it, to refuse to let him go. But he knows he can’t. Or he could, but it would make no difference. Loki has to do this and is committed to, that is clear from every line of him: resolve and resignation in equal parts.

So instead, Mobius wraps Loki in his arms once more, this less crushing embrace and more holding hug, and says, “Just come back.”

Loki squeezes him once, whispers, “I will,” close to his ear, and then he’s gone, Mobius left holding onto nothing.

A year's worth of time passes before Mobius sees Loki again.

Two Beating Hearts (ao3) - Ficus98 T, 56k

Summary: There was something about Loki.

Maybe it was those green eyes, or his silver-tongue that helped him slip out of trouble. Maybe it was his undying strength that seemed to never leave him no matter what horrors he had to endure, but when Mobius first met him in that prison, he felt something in himself.

Would it be enough to break Loki out and help him heal? And even if that were possible, could Loki recover from what he’d gone through?

While Loki battles his way back to health, Mobius finds himself battling his own feelings.

While You Were Sleeping, I Fell In Love (ao3) - 19960821 T, 2k

Summary: “Your place or mine?” Loki asked casually as they reached the elevator.

Mobius flushed a deep pink, his brain short-circuiting at the implication of how people usually used those words together in a sentence.

Loki was quick to notice this, and he smiled mischievously. Mobius kicked himself internally for being so obvious. He would never hear the end of this.

...

Or Loki and Mobius nap together for the first time in Mobius' bed.

(You Made It Feel Like) Home (ao3) - imalivegrace G, 16k

Summary: Don didn't know the man that stood in his shop, but he wanted to learn everything about him. Something inside of Don told him he could trust this mystery man.

or

When the timelines are saved and no one has to be a tree, Mobius gets sent back to his timeline. He has no memories of the TVA, waking up as if it's just a regular day in the life of Don Lewis Jet Ski salesman and single father. Don Lewis's life becomes a bit more exciting when a mysterious man starts to show up at his work.

[secondmovement0]

The Ultimate Comparison Guide of Rolex and Omega Watches

Any watch lover you speak with is likely to have strong feelings about both Rolex and Omega watches. They are two of the most well-known watchmakers in the world and leaders in their respective fields. How do you decide since either brand is a good choice? Throughout their histories, both watch companies have experienced their fair share of legendary moments. Rolex was the first to climb Mount Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary and swim the English Channel with Mercedes Glitz. OMEGA has gone on missions to the moon with NASA and dived to the bottom of the ocean with Jacques Cousteau. Here, we examine a head-to-head comparison of Omega and Rolex.

What are the main points of similarity and contrast between Omega and Rolex?

Both manufacturers are authorised James Bond watches.

Both companies serve as the recognised timekeepers for various sports competitions.

Beyond COSC accreditation, both brands have endeavoured to create high-quality standards.

Important difference

Price: Rolex watch prices are more expensive than Omega watches in both the new and used markets.

Movement: Omega produces watches with both mechanical and quartz mechanisms, but Rolex no longer employs quartz movements and only uses mechanical ones.

Water resistance: In 2019, OMEGA's Seamaster Planet Ocean Ultra Deep Professional broke the previous record for water resistance set by Rolex in 1960 with the Deepsea Special Back by reaching a depth of 10,928 metres.

A thorough examination of the parallels and discrepancies between Rolex and Omega

There are many significant parallels between Omega and Rolex. Beginning in the 1960s, James Bond's first authorised timepiece was a Rolex. Then, omega watches took over the brand in the 1990s, and it is still 007's unmistakable watch to this day. Omega has a lengthy history of serving as the Olympic Games' official timekeeper and, more recently, the PGA of America. Like tennis, golf, yachting, motorsports, and horse racing,

Rolex has a long history of keeping time for these events. Both Omega and Rolex have made substantial contributions to the watch business outside of sports and pop culture. In order to provide a higher quality standard than COSC certification, OMEGA, and METAS teamed up in 2014. In order to replicate actual wear circumstances, such as resistance to water, shock, temperature changes, and magnetic fields, they developed the approach. Similar to this, in 2015 Rolex introduced its Superlative Chronometer Certification. After extra testing, every Rolex watch receives this green seal in addition to COSC certification.

The decision between Rolex and Omega watches ultimately boils down to personal preference. Both companies are innovators in accuracy and precision. Their timepieces are simply transitional from adventure to the boardroom and they create versions for the sea, land, and air. You won't be dissatisfied whether you choose a Rolex or an Omega.

Company details:

Company name: Second Movement

Email id: contactus@secondmovement.com

Ph no.: +91 11 4261 0170Website:https://www.secondmovement.com/

[bushs-world]

Saw this post on my dash and well this submitter got a lot of things wrong. So let me correct it.

'Sylvie is a well written, complex character and the hate towards Sylvie is completely dripping with misogyny and sexism'

*on a side note, the submitter definitely had a sly way of calling Sylvie trash

How you may ask? Well, let me explain.

So, the first part. Is Sylvie a badly written character?

To answer that question, we first need to understand what a well written character looks like (x). Well, to save time the linked articles gives 5 parameters of a well written character that are

1. They have a clear motivation

2. They are consistent

3. Their habits come from their backstory

4. They have got little flaws

5. They balance other characters - and other characters balance them.

And, well Sylvie fulfills all 5 parameters.

Sylvie has a clear motivation - killing the timekeepers and then killing the man behind the curtain (and she even has a valid reason of her motivation - she wants revenge against the person who took her life away)

She is consistent - all throughout the series, she single minded moves towards her goal

Her actions come from her backstory- in Sylvie's case, her entire identity comes from her backstory. Her backstory causes her to reject the identity of a Loki and adopt the name Sylvie. Being on the run and hiding in apocalypses causes her to become cynical and develop trust issues)

She has little flaws - in her case a major flaw. She has trust issues and lashes out when she feels threatened. She can't look past her revenge.

She and Loki balance each other - both of them are equally matched and complement each other. Loki is more powerful magic user, Sylvie is better in physical combat.

So, now how the hell is Sylvie a badly written character. She is a rich, complex, three dimensional, morally grey character (x). But sure she is going to look like a badly written character when antis go ahead and erase her entire backstory and her trauma, straight up lie or misinterpret her actions and intentions, deny parts where she contradicts their opinions and take her actions at face value, then blow it all up in epic proportions to portray her as a straight up evil character.

Now, the misogyny part. Well not only is the hatred towards Sylvie misogynist. But this hatred translates to misogynist hate towards poor Sophia as well. Sure this isn't misogyny right?

But still let me point out the hypocrisy and double standards regarding Sylvie. And let me use our beloved Loki as an example.

EXHIBIT A

Loki- Sends destroyer after Thor to stop him, then provoking him for a fight

Well, he was having a mental breakdown (which he was, no jokes here) and he just wanted to finally vent out after suppressing his feelings for so long

Sylvie - Fights with Loki after he comes in between and tries to stop her from accomplishing the one thing she wanted so badly. And in her mind betrayed her because they were supposed to take down the man behind the curtain together.( Now I know Loki was valid in his points and Sylvie was blind with rage. But the key here is to try and see things from Sylvie's pov)

She is a narcissistic abuser. She lashed out at Loki after he didn't agree with her. Even her stance is that of an abuser (like whatever happened to her drive to revenge and Loki getting in the way?)

EXHIBIT B

Loki - Tries to commit genocide of Jotunheim

Well it was his internalised racism. He so wanted to distance himself from his jotun heritage, he decided to completely destroy an entire planet and exterminate an entire race.

Sylvie - Kills minutemen, the literal people who abducted her, erased her reality, hunted her like a dog for years before forcing her to hide in apocalypses and are still pruning countless innocent timelines and people

She is a villian who killed innocent (very innocent) TVA workers and she couldn't show any compassion towards them even after finding they are variants (as if they showed her lots of compassion when they hunted her). But yeah, this one is interesting because of the assumption that Sylvie should care about them even after they took away her entire life and tried to kill her and hunted her all her life because she is a woman?? Gender roles anybody?? But also what about her scene with B15? Oh yes, either it never happened or Sylvie was being a smug bitch.

So to sum it up, Loki learning about his adoption is a very traumatic incident and it resulted in his fall in Thor. And his actions are justified because he was in a bad place or was never wrong in the first place.

But Sylvie's trauma over being abducted, displaced and forced to live on the run in apocalypses isn't worth anything. Her flaws, her insecurities, the reasons behind her actions are totally erased and Sylvie is painted and vilified only. Because how dare she be imperfect? She is a woman. Either she has to be Ms goodytwoshoes. Or she is an evil villian who is trash.

So , in the end, dear submitter. Sylvie isn't a badly written character. You make her one in your head to cover up your misogyny and sexism. And btw Sylvie isn't the only one who is a target of sexism. TVA Loki or my beloved Larry is also mocked and ridiculed because he no longer displays the toxic masculinity traits which so many people confuse for superiority.

[writing-prompts-for-friends]

Questions to Help World Build

I’ve realized I have a big problem with my writing. I am awful at world-building. Like, I just start writing without thinking about the world. And since I write fantasy. Well. That’s pretty no bueno and leads to all kinds of problems down the road. So I did some brainstorming with my friends and we created a list of over 100 questions to help think about our stories’ worlds and make them more concrete. Thanks to everyone who chimed in and gave me a hand! 

A traditional Japanese clock, wadokei, that counted hours from 9 to 4, starting from sunrise, and then starting once again from sunset. (1-3 were not used for religious purposes.) They’re super interesting and confusing. You should definitely check them out.

Temporal

Is your story set in the past, present, or future?

Specifically, what year(s), month(s), day(s)?

Are days 24 hours? Or does time pass differently in this world?

How many months are there in a year? Is it a seven day weekday? Does the concept of weekends exist?

Have most existing societies developed a timekeeping device?

Is there a way to communicate across long distances?

The concept of time zones is still relatively new to our world. Prior to the late nineteenth century, timekeeping was a purely local phenomenon. Each town would set their clocks to noon when the sun reached its zenith each day. Do standardized time zones exist across the world?

Geographical

From a planet perspective, is it Earth? If it is not Earth, or an alternative version of Earth, what is it like? Is gravity the same? Does it have a moon or multiple moons? Can you see other planets? Is it closer or further from the sun? If so, what impact does that have on the climate and passage of time?

What town, state, region, country, continent, planet does this story take place in? What are its bordering/nearest neighbors? Draw a world map if you want.

What kind of land is it? Landlocked? Mountainous? Along the sea? Desert? Tundra? Tropical forest? Plains? Agricultural? Industrial?

What kind of plants and animals are common to the area? Are there any that do not exist in the real world?

What are the most common crops and livestock in various regions? What geographic features influence certain regions ability to grow/raise their crops and livestock (positively and negatively)? Are the regions diets strongly influenced by what they are able to grow themselves, or do other circumstances (like strong international trade) allow them to have more varied selections? How does religion influence what is considered ‘normal’ to eat?

What, if any, natural disasters are common to the region? Earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, monsoons, blizzards?

How many seasons does it have? Are any longer than others?

What is the typical weather like for those seasons?

Does the region have any unusual geographical features that set it apart? Perhaps there is some weird thing like Devil’s Tower just chilling out. Or hot springs because of volcanic activity?

Is it easy to travel from place to place within the area? Is it difficult to travel because of terrain/technology issues, or because travel is strictly regulated?

Main Locations: Cities

Many stories take place within one city. In Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, a character remarks, “So, if a city has a personality, maybe it also has a soul. Maybe it dreams.” What personality does this city have? What soul does it have? What does it dream of when it slumbers? If your story takes place within a settlement, town, or city, give these questions some thought.

Exactly where is it located within the lands you conjured up in the above Geography questions? Does it have a bay? A river? Does it butt up against mountains? Draw a map of the city.

How big is the city? Is it compact, or sprawling?

How old is the city?

What is the history of the city? How did it come to be? What tumults and triumphs has it seen?

What is the population? Is it currently increasing, decreasing, or remaining the same?

Does the town have any claim to fame? Any tourist attractions? What are they? What’s the story behind them?

If it’s a big enough city, how many and what kind of districts does it have? Residential, Commercial, Industrial, etc. Where are they?

Are there any areas that are deemed unsafe? If so, where are they and why are they unsafe?

Is there public transportation? What kind, bus, tram, train, subway, monorail? Is it good?

How do people get around this city if not by public transportation?

Are the roads narrow or wide? Crisscrossing in a methodical grid or higgledy-piggledy?

What are the buildings like? What materials are they made of? If they’re wooden, are they new wood, old wood? If they’re painted, what colors? If they’re stone, what stone? If they’re brick, is it new red brick or blackened, crumbling brick? If they’re glass and metal, are they sparkling with new hope or dull and jaded?

Are there many skyscrapers? Or are most buildings 1-3 stories tall? What does the skyline look like?

Are there many parks?

How is the city powered? Coal? Hydroelectric? Wind? Nuclear? Has it always been so?

What is the city’s main source of revenue? Agriculture? Tourism? Manufacturing? Mining? Something else? A combination? Dive deeper into this. If it’s agriculture, what do they grow? Tourism–what is famous? etc. This will help to determine what a lot of people do for a living.

What are the demographics? Ethnicity, age distribution, distribution of upper, middle, and lower class, etc.

How many schools are there? Universities? Are any of them good? Do they specialize in anything? Do schools even exist? Perhaps there are clans that teach their children everything they need, for example, or education isn’t viewed as important.

Are there any particular landmarks within the city that standout?

How many and what kind of restaurants are there?

Are there supermarkets, open air markets, or both?

Where do young people go to spend time? What about adults?

Do people there bustle or do they amble?

What are the nights like? Does the city grow quiet, or does it grow rowdy?

What does the city smell like?

If you had to give your town a color, one that represented its personality, what color would it be?

Main Locations: Houses (or buildings, but mainly houses)

There are many stories that have a house or headquarters or hospital or some sort of building as their main setting. These questions will mostly be geared towards helping you figure out a house, but you can apply these to other buildings too probably.

Exactly where is the house located within the city or outside the city? How does your character usually get there? Draw a map. 

What year was the house built?

Was this house built by the current family or their ancestors? Who else lived in the house before the current dwellers? What were they like? Did they leave their mark on the house somehow?

What style is the house? Bungalow? Cabin? A shed? A cave? (makes the following questions mostly useless if so lol)

How many stories is it?

What is it made of? Wood? Brick? What color is it?

Does it have a lot of windows?

Are the curtains usually open or drawn? Are thee curtains at all?

What does the front door look like? 

Is there a porch?

You enter the front door. Or maybe you don’t. Maybe you use the side door because the front door is for show or something. Anyways. You enter the house. What room do you step foot into?

Draw out the floor plans for each floor. How many rooms are there? Where are they? How big are they? How are they connected? What color are they? What style of decor?

Is there a basement? Is it used or is it just a home for spiders and darkness and unwanted things? How about an attic? Crawlspace?

How many bathrooms? 

Are there any rooms that only certain people are allowed to enter? If so, why? 

What is the flooring? Carpet? Wood? Tile? Linoleum? 

What does the house smell like?

Government/Military/Economy

In other words, “the boring stuff,” if you ask me. But this is a very important aspect of any world. 

What sort of government is in place? Democracy, oligarchy, etc? Is it a just or corrupt government?

How are goods exchanged? Bartering? Money? Coins and bills? Credit cards? A specific kind of sea shell? Lol

What are the police like? Strict? Lax? Is there a curfew?

Do taxes exist? If so, do the people feel as though they are heavily or unduly taxed?

Where is the intersection between theology and law? Is it common to have religious leaders in positions of power? Are laws based around religious ideology, or is there an effort to keep them separate?

Is there an organised structure devoted to halting criminal acts? Are they corrupt? Who runs the organisation? How does their reputation change based on demographic? What is the history of the organisation, and how does that history influence how it operates today?

Regarding potentially criminal acts, what is the elgality of prostitution, sex work, ect.?

What about drugs and other illicit substances? Alcohol, illicit drugs, recreational use. Legality, festivity, age limits, etc.

Underbelly. How prevalent is crime, what sort of crime (scaled from pickpocketing to human trafficking) is there? Are there areas that have bad reputations because of it?

Regarding war, are there currently conflicts in the world? Are they international or civil wars? How common is it to have an active war? What is the history of war? What does current warfare look like (Is it dudes in metal suits swinging swords? Have longbows been invented? Gunpowder? Tanks? Missiles?) Is military service mandatory or voluntary? How is the military seen? Is there a sense of patriotism for the military, or does the common man fear it?

Is there stigma around certain genders entering the military? Are come genders regarded as better recruits than others? Is it illegal for some genders to enter the military? Does a person's sexuality affect their ability to serve?

How has religion influenced war? Have there been holy wars in the past? Do any religious institutions hold their own military forces?

Cultural/Historical

I’ve put these together because events in history lead to cultural change. You can apply these questions not only to the world/country, but also the city or even the neighborhood, workplace, or school that your story takes place in.

What is the history of the region? Who was it settled by? Was another group of people displaced? After that, did any new cultures come in? Did they get along?

Were there ever any wars or serious conflicts in the region? What was the cause and what was the outcome of the war if there was one?

In our world, the internet, social media, and film/tv are massive cultural drivers. They determine the latest fashions, jokes, topics, and expressions. What are the big cultural drivers in your world? Books? Plays? Radio? Oral tradition?

Is it a collectivistic or individualistic society?

What languages are spoken by your characters? Is multilingualism common?

What sorts of cultures can be seen? Do any clash? Do any mesh?

What sort of foods are most common?

What superstitions do people hold? Is there a version of “knock on wood” or throwing salt over your shoulder after a funeral? What are the roots of these superstitions?

Are there religions? If so, what are they? Do any conflict with each other? Are zealots or extremists an issue?

Does slavery or indentured servitude exist?

Are there any class or caste systems? If so, what are they, and what does an average day look like for a member of each class/caste?

How does a person's appearance change from country to country? Do certain countries have very distinct fashions? If so, are the fashions influenced by religion, surrounding countries, the cultural majority or international trade partners?

How does a person's clothing relate to their social standing? Is it very easy to assume someone's roll by appearance alone? Are there punishments for dressing above or below your social standing?

Does the society place a great deal of importance on a person's presentation, or is the society more lenient on such things?

Is there an emphasis on conformity to a dress code, or is individuality encouraged? How strictly is clothing regulated by gender binary? Is it commonplace to see a man and a woman walking down the street in the same cut of clothes? Is there a social stigma when a person does not conform to the most common form of dress for their gender?

How are sexual rights viewed? Does the LGBTQ community have the same rights as people outside the community? How are sex acts between people of the same sex viewed? Is it legal? Taboo? Are there cultures that encourage those relationships in some circumstances (like how the romans were down with guys with guys in the military)?

Are there any groups of people that are victims of prejudice? If so, who are they, who holds these views against them, and what views specifically are they?

In regards to gender, do certain societies hold differing beliefs? Is there a commonly accepted number of gender identities or does it change regionally? Is the most common gender spectrum a binary, or do certain racial and cultural differences allow for a wider range to be seen as the baseline?

Are children raised by their biological parents or are children considered to be in the care of the wider community? Is it common/acceptable for extended family to raise children, such as parents needing to study, work, or serve time in the military? Is adoption a common thing in society? Is there a stigma around adoption/being adopted? Do cultural or religious views impact how adoption is seen by the wider community? What is adoption like for a single perspective parent? When adopting, is interracial adoption accepted/common, or is it seen in a negative light? Are some societies more open to adopting children outside of their own race?

How is sex and virginity viewed? Does religion influence it? What is the age of consent? What is appropriate on a first, second, third date? Is sex something that is talked about openly, or something taboo? Are you supposed to wait until marriage? Do couples stay monogamous while dating? Do some regions place higher importance on virginity than others? Do some place higher importance on one gender’s virginity than others?

How is marriage viewed? Are arranged marriages a big thing, or are people free to choose? Is monogamy common? How is a marriage symbolized? A wedding ring, or something different?

How is divorce viewed? What is the divorce rate? Can people remarry?

Magic and the Supernatural

If magic or spooky stuff doesn’t exist in your story, disregard this section.

Does magic exist? If so, who can use it? What are the limitations to their magic? What things are they capable of using their magic to do? What things are they incapable of doing?

Are there laws against what kind of magic can/cannot be used? What sort of laws? Who enforces them? What are the punishments for breaking said laws if they exist?

How does the existence of magic affect religion? Are there religious institutions that infuse magic into their worship? Are there religious sects that see magic as immoral and in direct opposition to their faith? Have there been conflicts in recent or ancient history between religion and the supernatural? Do some sects employ people to hunt and/or enforce law over the supernatural?

Assuming that magic does exist, is it taught? Are there different schools of magic? Is there a system of ranking for magic users based on their skill level?

Do non-magic users look towards magic users with respect or fear?

What role does magic play in this world? Has technology not advanced because magic solves many problems? Or has technology advanced and the use of some magics has become unnecessary?

Are there any mythological creatures/monsters, such as vampires, demons, skinwalkers, dragons, or other creatures of your own creation? Are they common? Do people believe in their existence? Do people worship them? Where can they be found? Do they interact with humans? Do humans fear them or try to put up with them as they do nature?

Do the dead continue to exist in some form, such as ghosts or zombies or the like? Can the dead be summoned or brought back to life?

Are there human/supernatural hybrids? Perhaps a half-demon half-human, for example? How are these people viewed by their peoples, and by society as a whole?

How has the supernatural influenced war? Do armies tend to have a mix of regular and supernatural soldiers/weapons? Have there been wars between the supernatural/magical and those without? How does magic influence a person standing in a mixed army? Is it more likely for a magical being to be promoted than a non-magical being? Conversely, are supernatural being forced into service and seen as pawns?

The End!

Please feel free to reblog and share, and add on any questions you think should be added!

[winged-eggers]

Ok to say something a bit more directly relevatn to my usual bullshit ive been poking at planetthings again; I was really struggling to understand things about the consequences of a planet being part of a binary system so I drew up a diagram for how light hits the planets across one rotation

The binary planets in the Hymei system (the star system the AU’s Star Allies equivalent occurs in) are all tidally locked to each other, and most are either roughly the same size or only have a slight size difference (with the notable exception of Lavadom-Sizzlai; Lavadom is significantly larger than Sizzlai). I marked the Outer side of each planet with a red dot and the Inner sides with blue to keep track of them.

The Outer side will experience 1 day/night cycle per 1 rotation as expected on a normal planet. The Inner side on the other hand will experience what looks like 2 day/night cycles per 1 rotation, due to being eclipsed by its partner planet once every rotation. In addition to having 2 short day/night cycles per 1 rotation, the Inner side will only ever receive indirect sunlight. So I'm assuming that the Inner side will be a lot cooler than the Outer side.

Although in the modern day most planets would have standardized their timekeeping system, this would have fascinating implications about the development of cultures between outer and inner sides of the same planet....

Sizzlai would actually be doing something way weirder; its orbit is far enough from its star and Lavadom’s atmosphere is so stupid reflective, that the Inner side of Sizzlai facing Lavadom would be consistently brighter than the Outer side.

[fxghtclxb]

hi hi !! i’m julia, super excited to be here !! if you wanna read a little bit abt my babes flour pls check out my post down below !  (also it’s honestly .. ah.. long, so pls skim if need be)

Me !!

name/alias: Julia age: 26 pronouns: She/Her

The Babes !!

name: Flour Mae age: 476 faceclaim: Hwang Hyunjin pronouns: He/Him hometown: Archana, Messier 83 time lived in roswell: 1 Month profession: Mortician alien or human: Full Blooded Alien alien ability: Interdimensional Vision

bio;; tw death mention

He never really knows exactly how he’d look physically until he opens his eyes from the warmth of the sun; it’s a bit of a game, he thought to himself, determined by fate in the most ironic way given why he was there in Roswell, New Mexico. His fingers first touched a patch of soft daisies this lifetime, thus, he named himself Flour (flower). His fourth life, his fourth visit, his fourth glimpse into the meandering of a species unlike his own and quietly document the events that transpired and yet-- it’s such a fresh experience every time.

He was an Archanan; timekeepers, others whispered, historians and keepers of the future itself but cursed with an idle heart. His kind could see the beautiful splinters of time fragmented against the strange concept of coincidence-- every possibility is laid out in front of him, from the terrifying to the heartwarming, their paths weaving and dipping and ending in a dark abyss when an event is finally chosen. It wasn’t a secret that a million tiny fibers stitched a destination together, all those little events perfectly placed in line that created the path for an inevitable event. He could pinpoint what possibilities could happen to the future if one little piece is moved, however, he is helpless in the act of intervening. It would be immoral, for one, and hopeless. He’s tried-- he was reprimanded, rightfully so, and punished for his indiscretion. So he watches now, ready to soak in the events on planet earth, taking diligent notes that plead for the goodness left in humanity at that point in time before he returns decades later with the same fair skin and furrowed brows.

Flour enjoys working with those who have already passed. The dead were much more confined in their possibilities. It provided solace, silence, a drop of odd serenity sandwiched between the buzzing of a sharp mind when he stepped out into the sunny world and was thrusted into a flurry of visions. A part of him felt a tinge of sadness every time he saw a drop of human tear land on a carefully placed tissue scrunched between clenched fists; he knew how expensive those are to Galians and, in an alternate universe, he could see himself reaping in the riches, but such selfish thoughts were quickly silenced by the much more human feeling of sympathy. Indeed, living among humans during different eras exposed him to the consistency of the emotional spectrum: sadness, pain, joy, anger, pity-- but he’s never understood the concept of love. He’s read about it, sure, seen it in theaters and shared between couples, but the passion expressed through beautiful, well framed murmurs that sound almost like their own alternate universe. From what he’s been told, there will be a time when an Archanan will find a mate -- but that, too, is down to fate.

Flour is a nervous boy, someone who always needs to keep their hands busy, who would quickly forget the pen tucked behind his ear, who use childish strawberry encrusted hairclips to keep his bangs out of his eyes when he worked. His racing mind makes him very indecisive about even the smallest things, but he secretly hopes that there will be those who quiet his fluttering heart. Friendships never come easily, nor do relationships; there’s no point in lingering on a premise of forever when forever doesn’t last, does it?

physical appearance ;; + soft pink hair + pale, v pale + appx 5′10 + long, thin fingers + light, airy bones + a pale mark perched right against the collarbone + almost a constant peachiness of the bottom lip from digging his nails nervously against it when worried

alien features ;; + an opal shimmer, almost twinkling when the light catches the right angles + golden blood

mini facts ;; + he has a ... serious fondness for sprinkles. It’s not a food that should be eaten by itself, he knows, but he finds the colors fun and it became his symbolic stress snack of choice + he tries very hard to not smell like formaldehyde when he’s not at work but he’s aware of how strong the odor could potentially be once he clocks out. he still has a preference for floral scents because it reminds him of the lives he’s previous lived + he’s Archanan royalty though there really isn’t a reason to bring that up ever, is there? his species is rare as it is already, even by alien standards. + he’s heard that roswell has its own collection of aliens that are very proud of their identity and, thus, is extremely fascinated with this brand new relationship between humans and alienkind. he’s still wary of revealing himself because he never really did in his past lives, however, he isn’t opposed to admitting his species in the future + he’s still getting used to the 21st century! there’s been LOTS of changes and one of his favorite past times is just.. hanging out at the supermarket and looking at all the different, wonderful selections

past lives ;; + He only considers one of his visits a ‘life’ if he is allowed (or forced) to stay past a decade on earth. Flour has dropped in on earth multiple times between lives to document the progression of world changing events as well, however. He learned of kindness, generosity, fear, a search for happiness. + Each past life provides a new physical appearance, identity, occupation, and storyline + His first was during the Qing Dynasty in 1623, accompanying Xu Xiake in his travels and documenting topography, geography, landmarks, and adventures. + His second was during the French Revolution in 1789, aiding in a newspaper office famous for its pamphlet literature. He must admit that this life allowed him to be swept away by human passion, leading to his fall. + His third was during the Soviet Famine of 1932, working with a coroner that’s near tears at each sundown. He learned about pain, suffering, optimism, tragedy. 

[d-a-anderson]

Conjunction

On a rare stellar occasion, two gods, a father and a son, discuss the merits and flaws of the human race.

Also published on Medium

Source Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute. Photo manipulation by author.

The old man was a haggard, sickly father who’d long since abandoned his sons. His shoulders were hunched inward, but his belly was swollen, veins visibly drawn across his stomach, and it stirred with kicks like the womb of a pregnant mother. He sat at a workbench with a butcher’s cleaver, hacking at a meaty haunch while a vulture looked on. The barn door was open. Outside were his fields; they’d been left unplowed for years but were nonetheless full with grain. His scythe sat in a corner, rustless but always wet, ever sharp.

He paid no mind to the storm outside. Rain beat on his barn’s roof shingles, and its rafters creaked in the wind. A crow flew into the open window looking over his bench, resting on the sill. Its inky feathers burned blue against the light of his oil lamp. It cawed at him.

“Leave—shoo,” the man said, and he waved his cleaver at the crow’s feet. It hopped, landing back on its spot with a flap of its wings. It cawed again and cocked its head, turning. One of its eyes was whitened, blind. The vulture, sitting idly, squawked back—a glottal, halting cry. The butcher stopped his grizzly work, studying the crow and its plumage.

“Leave me, Graybeard.” He gave the haunch another thwack on the cutting board. “This one wasn’t yours.”

The blackbird looked at the meat on the board, eyeing the vulture, then the butcher. It flew off, cawing into the distance as it did.

The man plucked up a piece from the knife. He threw it at the vulture, saying:

“Mimas—here.”

The vulture caught the piece in the air, quickly gulping it down.

The rain continued to pour, and he felt its dampness underfoot as a stream trickled over the foundations of the barn, licking at his toe. Distant thunder rolled, but the man paid no mind. He continued to cut and savored a morsel for himself, gobbling it down like the vulture did.

“Fodder for my stirring sons and daughters,” he muttered, licking his lips. “Stay placid—save those kicks for each other; spare your sweet father.”

Thunder cracked again. This time lightning lit up the barn’s interior like a magnesium flash. He dropped the cleaver and it clanged on the floor. He swore in his mother’s tongue and recomposed himself, picking up the knife again. Looking behind him to the barn's entrance, he saw nothing but his open fields under gray skies. He turned back to his workbench, wiping the knife down on his apron.

Another lightning flash, this time off in the distance. But its light cast a long shadow across the far side of his workbench and up the wall. He looked over his shoulder to see the silhouette of a tall, built man with streaming locks and a beard. Some kind of bird was on his shoulder—he didn't bother to see what kind.

“Leave me,” the butcher snorted. “I already told your hoary fortuneteller of a father that I didn’t harvest his bloody einherjar.”

The bearded man strode into the barn as the butcher picked up his cleaver, swinging it down into the meat. It sliced effortlessly, quivering as it struck the board beneath.

“You mistake me.”

Instantly, the butcher recognized the lilt in the man’s voice. It didn’t belong to the crow's master—this was an Aegean accent. He turned. The man’s hair was dark like oakwood, not blonde, and was thick and curly, his skin olive-colored. His irises were bright pale: electric storm-gray. The bird on his shoulder was an eagle.

The butcher grunted: “Jove, my boy.”

“Saturn,” the god nodded, then adding, “—father.”

“On what occasion do I owe this visit?”

“Our great conjunction. You are the cosmos’s timekeeper, aren’t you? Surely you out of anyone would know.”

“Ah—our conjunction,” Saturn mumbled, raising an eyebrow at the syllables. He smeared a bloody hand on his apron and fumbled in its pocket. He pulled out a timepiece and flicked it open. Its face held a hundred hands at a hundred different axes, all rotating wildly like the stars in the sky. “How could I’ve forgotten… of course.” He flicked the pocket watch closed and dropped it back in his pocket.

“We’re the closest we’ve been in over half a millenium. Last we spoke, the claymen, our humans, were building houses out of thatched grass and nestled stone. They’d just nearly mastered war and had gone to slaughtering each other en masse.”

“Of course,” said Saturn, grinning from beneath his dirtied beard and mustache. “I’ve barely had to plow my fields since then. Easy harvests.”

“They’re exploring their world. Soon they’ll cross seas instead of just rounding them. They’ll build empires that stretch from one side to another.”

“Sounds like more war to me,” Saturn said, turning back to his cleaver and meat. He noticed Mimas studying Jove’s eagle. “My bales will continue to be thick—which I prefer.”

“But you can’t deny their ingenuity,” the thundergod responded. “Millennia ago, no more than our hands have fingers, they were children with sticks and fire. Now they model themselves after our courts and speculate on our true nature. Don’t you have any opinion on their future? After all, times are few and far between that we get to discuss them so intimately.”

“My opinion,” Saturn muttered, the end of the word cut off by the thwack of his knife on the board, “—is only as deep as the roots of my grainstock. Only as complex as my hunger. So long as they continue to sacrifice, ignorant of why or not… that is my investment.”

Another thwack as he focused on his butchery. He continued:

“I wonder at your fascination with these creatures, boy. I think even the Aesir only care insofar the offerings are sweet. Speaking of—care for some?”

Old Kronos held out to young, glittering Jove a blood-soaked lump of flesh. Jove’s mouth dipped in revulsion; he waved it away.

“I don’t share your appetites.”

“Of course you don’t.” Saturn threw the piece to Mimas, who gobbled it up like he did the last. “But you have others. These clay men and women are as much your playthings as they are mine. Your choice of play is simply… different.”

Jove’s eagle gave a cry out at the vulture, who squawked back like he had at the crow.

“I’m not here to bicker over our differences,” Jove said, ignoring his father’s insult. “I’m here to discuss their fates.”

“What fates? Different than us gods?” Saturn sneered as his cleaver let loose another thwack on the board.

“You might be disinterested, but I’ve seen their work up close. They may live as long as mayflies, but even now, they’re bursting at the seams of their planet. It won’t hold them for long. Their powers are simple, but the arrangements of their tools grows complicated. Soon they won’t be content to cross the seas enclosing their land… they’ll want to cross vaster seas: the seas that enclose their planet—even the seas that enclose their minds.”

“Damned titans loosened the box and let wildfire run amok,” Saturn said. “Let the clay entertain itself. Who am I—or you—to interfere?”

“You don’t think their empires would impinge on our own, at worst? Or, at best, they might have something worthwhile to add to us as allies?”

Saturn snorted at the word, but said nothing. Jove continued:

“They love, hate, and bicker like us. Their microcosms are merely smaller than ours—but those boundaries grow thin. Sticks and fire were their beginning, not their destiny.”

“You sound like you admire them,” Saturn said. “Are you so quick to get over Prometheus’s duplicity?”

“I admire their ingenuity,” Jove admitted with a shrug, “…their cunning, their persistence—even a god can evolve. Maybe you should consider it as a strategy. It might serve you well someday.”

“I am old,” Saturn growled, letting his cleaver rest on the board. Mimas shuffled on his haystack, still watching the eagle. “I'm older than you. And let me tell you something, Zeus, god of thunder: when Pandora spread her box's lid, it upset more than the balance I’d instilled since before you were a stone and just as dumb. The rings on my orrery are carefully weighted. The slightest change brings disruption not just to me or you, or even the world of petty humans—the whole cosmos tilts, and worlds with names they barely know will slide off the table. Gods don’t feed off Earth alone, but few places pose such risk. Do you know the balance I had to maintain, that I still maintain? A wayward titan or giant here or there grants a lump of dirt a lit arrow and suddenly they’re jumping rings on my timepiece, planning vacations to Luna for a thrill—“

He slammed his cleaver's blade into the workbench, its handle erect; Mimas’ wings fluttered as Saturn roared hoarsely:

“If you had a care for either god or human, you’d think like me, and maintain the balance that persists as I do. Instead, you instigate, you whisper sweet nothings in their feminine ears and grant fateful boons by way of your own ineptitude. Your thunderbolts aren't flashes of genius; they start fires at random. You’re a rebel, a chaosmaker—not a ruler. A king applies laws, he governs. By that standard, your brother Pluto would be a better caretaker than you.”

Jove had his arms crossed, and Saturn was secretly impressed that his son hadn’t lunged at him already. Instead, the Olympian let his eagle off his shoulder, where it flapped its wings and nestled itself on the ground. Saturn added, his tone more even now:

“I am the cosmos’s timekeeper, boy. My accounts are carefully measured. The humans won’t ascend to godhood like you surmise, despite your minor insurrections and naive hope. They are too petty; their own technology eclipses them. If you think their spirits can evolve as fast as their ability to wield various forms of fire, you’re as deluded as they are.”

“Then to what conclusion, this experiment?” Jove asked. “They’ll just consume themselves? Evaporate in a fit of self-annihilation?”

“Of course,” Saturn said, removing his cleaver wedged in the bench. “Gaia will survive even if humanity doesn’t. She is a hardy ground and even more inventive than them. Clay to clay, dust to dust.”

He heard Jove shuffle to the edge of the barn door’s entrance. He could make out his shadow leaning against the frame.

“Say what you say happens. Who will offer sacrifices then? Whose souls will grow as grain in your fields?”

“Gaia is inventive, I already said,” said the harvest god. “Some other clayform will come along while you still walk, I’m sure.”

“And say what you say doesn’t happen. That my naive optimism in them isn’t misplaced—that they do jump your rings, that they cross our skies, and even harness my thunderbolts. What then? What will be the nature of your harvest?”

The vulture squawked at the eagle who stretched his wings wide at the barn’s entrance. Saturn plucked another piece from his board, ripping it between his teeth.

“Why shouldn’t you be worried too, in that case?” He finally replied, chewing skin. “They’ll forget their sacrifices and fancy themselves like the Titans did. On that day I’d imagine you’d come to my side, ready to settle the score.”

Jove nodded, looking across his shoulder to the grain fields outside. Saturn held his cleaver and cut carefully, his knife cutting its way around a thick bone.

“Wouldn’t that be fitting?” Jove said. “They had a genesis once after all, and so did we as gods. That was counted by your orrery even before you made it. Perhaps their fates are set in stone too. I’m sure you could ask the Aesir about that.”

Saturn turned on his bench, letting the cleaver slide in his hand. It nicked the bone.

“Meaning, boy?”

Jove’s glance nestled back on Saturn’s, and his eyes crackled:

“It would be so godlike of them to surpass us in the same way I surpass you.”

The cleaver ripped from the bone and, with barely a thought, flew from Saturn’s hand. Its blade whirled in a tight orbit, headed for Jove’s neck. There was another magnesium flash, and Saturn was blinded briefly. Blinking, the lightning’s afterglow drawn down his sight like a neon vein, he looked for his wayward son.

He didn’t see him. Instead, he saw the oak-colored wings of the eagle in the distance, flying across the grain field. There was a glow beneath its wings on the horizon. Saturn blinked again—the lightning strike had lit the fields aflame. Fire fanned upward even as the storm continued to pour.

He got up from his bench and passed the barn's threshold. The cleaver was resting just at the edge of the field where he’d flung it, but it had hit nothing but air. It still had fresh blood from the cuttings on his board. He picked it up and wiped it on his apron, looking to either side. There was no one. The eagle in the distance was a fading speck; thunder rolled on.

Saturn turned to go back to his work. He heard the distinctive caw of a bird, but it wasn’t from Mimas inside. He looked up and saw a raven sitting atop his roof’s shingles near the weather vane. It croaked again, turning its head to look at him. Its eye on that side was blind, as white as snow and as blue as ice.

Saturn sneered at it. The raven merely croaked again, then once more, as if in a laugh—then lifted its wings and left. The wind changed as it did, and the vane swung the other way in the storm.

Saturn reached into his pocket to pull out his watch—then hesitated, and stopped. Instead, he grasped his cleaver and went back inside to finish his butchering.

Text © 2020 Daniel A. Anderson

[tenleaguesbeneath]

Timekeeping in space

It would be really weird for far-future deep space to be using time units based on the earth, when a calendar day and a local day aren’t even going to be the same length. So this is going to be a bunch of weird exploratory calculations in what alternative timekeeping systems might emerge and how convenient they are.

A kilosecond is about a quarter hour (actually 0:16:40). In a space polity with labor to downtime ratios comparable to the present-day US (not guaranteed) in a location where basing time schedules on local solar-planetary conditions is impractical, a standard work shift might be 30 kiloseconds (8 hours 20 minutes), leading to a 90 kilosecond (25 hour) or 120-kilosecond (33.3 hour) day, or even 125 ks (34:43:20) if even division into megaseconds is prioritized. A megasecond is 11.6 days, which would probably fill the role of a week on a space station with no contact with earth; it might contain eight such work shifts on, with 60 ks breaks in between for sleep and recreation in between; after this 720 ks work cycle is a “weekend” of 280 ks (this assumes that labor wins over capital in the contest to dispose of the remaining 10 ks after 11 “days” of 90 ks each)

A gigasecond is too long to be practical, about 31 years (so, useful for measuring people’s lifespans and not much else). 30 megaseconds is about a year, though (347 days), so you might see a unit of order tens to 100 Ms used for tracking ages.

A system like this is already used today inside of your computer (and the smallest buffer used for those representations rolls over in 2038); set some date as the standard zero and you can track time universally like this.

As this system gets properly lived-in, some of these units will get proper names. The divisions of the Ms into “days” might even get names, like weekdays do, or at least numbers or letters.

I could see a definition of “hours” based on local planetary conditions; a local planetary day is always a convenient number of hours because the length of an hour varies by local conditions. A minute is the square root of an hour in seconds (so there are as many seconds in a minute as minutes in an hour). Stray seconds are added or removed as leap seconds as necessary.

The problem with these measurements, the thing making them inconvenient, is that it’s useful to have a named unit at every order of magnitude for time, and that the multiple between these units is not always 10, because we evolved and designed our culture to match solar conditions, which work like that. Instead we’re working in tens and hundreds of an inconvenient base unit.

If, as opposed to using SI units, everyone’s chronometers base themselves on hours, a more natural division comes up in space, at the expense of having immense difficulty matching your chronometry to local conditions (a second is small enough that if you need to add or remove leap seconds to match your clocks to a planet’s rotation, you can without people noticing. Doing the same with hours is going to be difficult). Even so, units like months and years are likely to vanish as datekeeping conveniences in favor of more regularized systems; a kilohour (41 days, 16 hours) might be adopted as a month, or its approximation at 960 hours/40 days. The 24 hour day might be lengthened to 30 hours, for divisibility by ten. Things that cycle in years might instead cycle in tens of kilohours.

You could get even weirder. objective SI timekeeping’s main present-day application is standardizing computer systems (which is why it would form the basis of standardized interstellar time), and so this system might end up based on, rather than SI prefixes, binary prefixes. A kibisecond is 17 minutes, 4 seconds; a mibisecond is 12.1 days (which means it might be split in half to make a 512-kibisecond week). These units are closer to existing earth-based units than their SI-based counterparts, incidentally (3.3 hours over vs 10.2 hours under), which is another reason why they might be preferentially adopted.

Intermediate units, in particular the equivalent of a day, are unlikely to be powers of two since being able to divide them by other factors (in particular 3) is important.

A 512-kibisecond week might divide into six days of 85 kibiseconds each, and two extra kibiseconds. A 28-kibisecond work shift is two minutes, 8 seconds shy of 8 hours. Assuming a slightly stronger pro-labor culture (which may be unlikely on a space habitat, given the expense of putting people there. NASA had to be forced not to book experiments during every waking hour an astronaut had), you might see four workdays (28 kibiseconds on, 57 kibiseconds off), two weekend days, and two bonus kis. 85 kis somewhat approximates the natural 64 kis truncation (removing the two least significant bytes from the timestamp); this truncation unit has a length of 18:12:16 and would constitute an eightfold division of a 512 kibibyte week.

A workweek based on truncations could have 21-Kis (5:58:24, a bit under a third of a cycle) or 28-Kis (7:57:52) work shifts, depending on the balance of power between labor and management, with five or six truncations (”trunks”, perhaps) on and the remainder off. It is evenly divisible by the half-Mis week.

8 mibiseconds is 97.09 days (97:2:10:08); 32 mibiseconds is 388.36 days (the excess is 8:40:32). If you want a year that is divisible by three, then 30 mibiseconds gives 364 days with an excess of 2:08:00.

The next whole-byte truncation of a time record is at 16 Mis, if that’s significant, which it probably is.

If you want to do a month-length haven turn (from Papers and Pencils, though the site was taken offline because of a hack and the backup service is holding the machine-readable backups hostage; the explanation of haven turns specifically has yet to be restored from a human-readable backup), on this scale, 2 mibiseconds would be a workable length for it; in earth units that’s 24:6:32:32. An even closer approximation can be made with 2.5 Mis (30:8:10:40), and if you’re using a 30-Mis “year” it’s even a twelfth of the year; half-Mis are permissible since those are your week.

In a postapocalyptic situation, where surviving chronometers are based on a composite standard or on interconverting between all of these (kibi and mibiseconds being used by computers because they’re more easily compressible because *handwave*, kiloseconds and hours being used by people), different post-apocalyptic polities may have decided to settle on different single standards, too, if you want to be extra confusing.

Of course, if you’re going to involve relativity, or time wonkiness with your hyperspace jumps, then your chronometry is going to have to compare to a standard reference frame and adjust accordingly. Because direct velocimetry is impossible (accelerometers can be made, as can measurements of relative velocity to things you can bounce light off of, but you can’t measure velocity directly), regular correction readings would have to be taken and supplied. Imagine booting up a computer that’s been in hibernation for 600 years and, while somehow it’s survived, it complains that its time calibration readings are out of date and its clock may be off standard. If time travel is a thing, the computer might want to track proper time vs standard time anyway.

I wasn’t expecting, and really enjoyed, how close the kibi/mibi units came to natural earth values. Tracking campaign time, and reporting it to the players, in kibi/mibiseconds seems like just the right amount of brain hurting juice. As an added benefit, the abbreviations for kibisecond and mibisecond (Kis and Mis) are even pronounceable. I think I might pronounce them “Keys” (singular and plural), “Trunk”, and Mis rhymes with “eyes” (again, singular and plural)

[starsailorstories]

Post about the calendar in SC

I’ve said before that the Basilean calendar is sort of two systems of timekeeping layered on top of each other and I’d like to go in depth about them. None of this is needed to understand the stories but if you refer back to it you can get a better idea of what kind of spans of time people are referring to and what time of the season/year it is. The two systems in play are the Cosmonist liturgical calendar, which influences the way history is recorded and weeks are divided up in secular life, and the Imperial calendar, which is used to mark the turn and quinturn date (units of time that are a lot more useful in dividing up 90,000+ earth year astraea lifetimes than planetary years) and also measures agricultural and financial “seasons” based on the Altamaian lunar year. 

Also, this just became firm canon like, a few months ago, so it’s possible that any dates/ages/other markers of time I said before then were either wrong or like completely made up on the fly without regard for any system and I am terribly sorry about that

Cosmonist Liturgical Calendar (used for “decades”, weeks, holidays)

Although the oldest surviving guide to Cosmonist ritual--the one included in the Writings of the Holy Poets--was written on Sitheria, its author was a Taregan. She recorded the religious year as observed by her own people in detail, and it stuck. Although Cosmonism is a big, diverse, and not-always-organized religion and a lot of local sects use their own planet’s calendar or some other system, Sitherians and Basillans who are loyal to either the empire or any of the planetary High Queens observe based on this schedule, which is more than enough to make it the mainstream in the Seven Suns.

The longest unit of the liturgical calendar is the gyevh, or cycle, which turns over every 12,000 years. Originally this span was inspired by the magnetic polar shifts of the planet, and it’s used to describe broad eras kind of the way humans use decades, like someone will talk about living through the 41st cycle the way a human would talk about living through the 90s.

The cycles alternate between arid cycles, when, before the climatological changes that prompted most to leave Tarega, the desert advanced north; and pluvial cycles when waters rose and wells and oases formed. Each cycle was further broken down into anngyevhei, groupings of three thousand years named for the broad natural features of that point in the cycle (I don’t have their words for these worked out yet, but “translations” are on the wheel above).

On a smaller scale, the 690-day Taregan year was also divided up for ritual and practical purposes. Although all the different clans and tribes on Tarega ascribed specific meanings to different phases and configurations of the four moons and some of them kept calendars based on that, the Cosmonist calendar uses the signs of planet’s zodiac (which, because they have two suns, four moons, and two proximal stars to play with are used much more for astronomical navigation than astrology) to divide the year into twelve 34-day periods.

Within the 34-day sidereal "months" there are two seventeen-day periods which are divided up as serves various purposes, but the odd day that would make them indivisible is considered sacred to Cunaderia and is a somber mini-holiday commemorating the passage of time. Some sects of cosmonism don't consider anyone to have officially been born or have died until the off days. The last of these of the cycle is the avi-fora, the Cosmonist tradition’s most sacred day, when the events of the past twelve thousand years are “sacrificed” to the goddess of time and fate in gratitude for the continued expansion of the universe.

Imperial Basilean Calendar

For much of recorded history, this was the only calendar Basillans and Sitherians knew. At times small groups would attempt to create a new one--the Glasmirian political independence movement, for instance, pushed its own calendar based exclusively on the Glasmirian year--but none of them really stuck. The empire, however, established a new calendar based on the length of one full rotation (one turn) of the rings, and made its adoption a matter of National Fidelity(TM). 

Each turn lasts seventy-three thousand days. The length of the day and “month”, which in this context is called a novilunium or new moon cycle, come from their altamaian counterparts. On Altamai, moon cycles are always 27 days long, and the Basilean calendar retains this but groups each Altamaian year of ten months into one of 119 supranovilunia, often shortened to just suprae. The Altamaian calendar looks like this (astraeas seem to like their windows and calendars circular, don’t ask me why):

So while all the Taregan jazz is used for determining religious holidays and marking major spans of time, most people in modern Basilea say dates and whatnot as altamaian day/altamaian month/supra number/turn date. (The disconnect between the liturgical and imperial calendars is the particular problem of every local priestess with a head for numbers and/or astronomy, because she’ll be tasked with making sure everyone knows when most of the religious and secular holidays of the year are. It's become standard practice for Cunaderian shrines to put up a sign every month with what dates the seventeenths of the Taregan months are, for example). Quinturns--groupings of five turns--are often used for general ages (which is handy for telling you the reader how old astraeas are in “human years”) and to describe long-term trends in economics and social sciences. 

[script-a-world]

Hey, I ran into an interesting problem I couldn't find addressed in stories before. How do we deal with calculating time across various planets? I'm kind of imagining like on earth we can get a chart with the local date and time in various cities but include other planets as well. At first glance I didn't think date conversions were a problem, after all, earth has several date systems, but would that be utterly confusing when considering different rotations and orbits?

Feral: Would it be complicated? Yes. Would it be "utterly confusing"? Not necessarily. 

Every planet would have it's own dating system based on their respective rotations and orbits as you expect (scientists have already proposed how a future Martian colonial calendar might work), but you can conceptualize it in terms of traveling across timezones. It's not a one to one match obviously, but for characters raised in a space traveling society, it would be an equivalent experience. And it's the experience that you relate to the audience, not the technical breakdowns.

For example, the Star Wars EU addresses this by having local time and Coruscant Standard Time, which is also how time is calculated when in hyperspace. And Star Trek has the star date for Federation citizens to use.

Tex: You've got the chart part right - many businesses that operate in multiple time zones often have a wall of clocks, with each one set to a different time zone. If date systems are important to remember, then either additional "clocks" used solely for calendars, or a digital clock that shows the time and date for each location, can be used.

Feral makes an excellent point in that one timekeeping system/location would probably be standardized, if only to be used as a baseline when converting to or from unknown systems. It wouldn't be confusing to someone experienced in using such a timekeeping system, but it might get frustrating to remember that time and date are different.

Constablewrites: You'll also have to consider how much contact people have across planets, and how quickly that contact happens. (Like, if I'm sending a letter to Europe I don't really have to worry about what time it is there when I send it out; if I'm sending a text message that becomes more important.) After all, time zones weren't proposed until 1879 , because before that it simply wasn't necessary to know exactly what time it was at a given moment somewhere else. It wasn't until the spread of railroads that people could travel far enough, and fast enough, to need a standard.

So a shared calendar is pretty essential if they have any contact at all, for accurate recordkeeping and being able to place events in relative context to each other. But a shared clock, like hours and minutes, may not be necessary depending on the setting.

Feral: In addition to the shared calendar, which I agree with Constablewrites is important, planets or ethnic or religious groups within the galactic or intergalactic society may still retain their own traditional calendar systems. Again, it can be complicated, but real world groups, like American Muslim and Jewish folks, do it all the time. Unless you're dealing with diplomat characters or others who would need to be able switch between a bunch of planets calendars, characters would probably just need to know the standardized and their one respective calendar. Also, I recommend asking your self, how much does the audience actually need to know to understand the plot?

If you'd like some help creating a calendar and timekeeping system for an alien world, Edgar at Artefexian has gone over it in detail [ Youtube ].

[miralsp]

Utc time offset

Solar time is the formula used to set civil time via UTC.Ī time offset is the amount of time added to or subtracted from UTC. There are two ways of establishing time on planet Earth - the atomic clock and solar time.Ītomics clocks are complex timekeeping mechanisms run by national governmental agencies and used on specific occasions, technologies, and systems. That is why countries located immediately west of the IDL - Tonga, Samoa, and Kiribati - are the first to celebrate the New Year. IDL is another imaginary line that passes through the middle of the Pacific Ocean and determines where you cross from one day to the next. Nevertheless, many people still use GMT as the time standard for all countries worldwide - for example, GMT+12:00 for New Zealand.īut there's also another important formalism - the International Date Line (IDL). UTC is precisely the same imaginary line defined by GMT at the Prime Meridian, located in the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. It replaced the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) in the late 1960s, even though GMT remains today as a regional time zone at UTC+00:00. The official time standard regulating the world's time and clocks is called Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The Differences Between GMT, UTC, and IDL Take a look at the official world time zone map. So, we all end up getting 24 standard time zones and 14 additional exceptions.Īs a result, local time always depends on what time zone you're in at a given moment.Īs stated above, all nations have specific interests, so the time zone map is not linear as it should be in theory. With the rotation of the Earth, from east to west, each meridian represents one given hour. They're technically named meridians, i.e., imaginary lines that run vertically from the North Pole to the South Pole, each 15 degrees apart. However, in a world with borders, political, geographical, social interests, and lobbies, the officially established time zones make the planet look like a complicated geometrical drawing of longitudinal lines. Ideally, the planet would be divided between 24 identical time zones, each representing one hour of the day. When you fly between Los Angeles and New York, you must add three hours to your clock upon arriving at your destination.Īnd while someone is waking and getting ready for another working day under sunny skies, another is heading off to bed under the moonlight. As a result, time is always different in various places on the planet. Welcome to the complex world of time zones. What time is it? Here's how a common daily question can have multiple answers.

[swordsandshuttles]

Rekindling A Hero Chapter Twelve: A Grim Reminder

The orange glow of a holographic alarm clock stung Shepard’s bloodshot eyes. Forcing them to focus, he read the numbers that curled around the designer projection, the slight morphing effect digging into him. 01:00, shift time. The Normandy, like most starships, didn’t use any particular planet for its timekeeping. Outside of larger, more general increments like days, months and years, the self-contained environment along with the subtle time distortion of FTL travel meant keeping to any time zone was pointless. Instead, the ship ran on shifts: 06:00 to 20:00, or six in the morning till eight in the evening were the standard aboard most Alliance ships, with Cerberus being no different. Not every job could be wrapped up in that timeframe, and there were plenty of things that required round-the-clock attention. Anything beyond 00:00, or midnight was considered a graveyard shift. By now most of the crew were in bed, with only a handful manning their stations in flight-ops, engineering or other critical systems. Despite a command position, Shepard had a solid five hours left of bunk time before waking up.

He rolled onto his back, looking up at the ceiling. The subtle sheen of glass was visible against the metal shutter that rested behind it, sealing away the view of space. He hadn’t opened that shutter since his first day aboard. The sight of the cold vacuum still caused the air to catch in his throat. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t joined Tali over by the bridge windows, been close while she said goodbye to that life she’d been building up for so long. Maybe he was just looking for the easy answer. Shepard screwed his eyes shut, feeling the gritty discomfort of dry lids rubbing against them. He dug his thumb and forefinger into the bridge of his nose, stimulating his tear ducts. He didn’t understand. It had only been a few hours ago that he’d been right here, relieved beyond words to have his close friend in his arms again. It had felt like a miracle. After all the death his team had waded through, there she was, unharmed. Even after Tali had woken up, when the pain and the loss had come up like bile, it was a blessing. Hearing her voice again, seeing that familiar glow in her eyes, the two of them had beaten the odds and reunited.

So why did he feel like this?

Shepard struggled to remember the dream that had roused him from sleep. Most of the previous day was there, but it certainly got harder to recall after he’d joined Garrus for a drink. They’d talked for a bit, airing frustrations about Cerberus, Miranda, the shitty situation they found themselves in. He’d chuckled at the turian’s bad jokes, his theories about what exactly was missing from the woman’s love life to make her such a bitch. It’d all been easy stuff to swallow. Once the griping and complaining had run its course, the conversation had mostly been about having Tali back, how things were shaping up to be just like old times. He remembered smiling at the thought of it, two years apart and it was like they’d never left each other’s side. More drinking, more stories. Stupid things no one else would understand. Hearing the thunk of a quarian’s foot against the hull of the mako, with a screaming tirade of insults following close behind. Getting snow in between turian faceplates. Teasing Liara, arguments with Ash, the bottles slowly emptied to the endless chorus of reminiscing. One story led to the next, and by the time the beers ran dry and the memories were exhausted, Garrus had given him a pat on the shoulder and left. Shepard hadn’t realised it at the time, but the turian hadn’t spoken about anything he’d done since the Normandy attack. They must’ve spent two hours together, and still neither had spoken a word about what happened on Omega. What seemed like a comfortable trip down memory lane then, felt considerably less warm now.

Tali never did join them. He felt like an asshole for noticing, but he had. Ever since their goodbyes in engineering, he hadn’t seen her once. It wasn’t fair to focus on that, Shepard knew it wasn’t. What she must have seen down on that desolate planet… it wasn’t the kind of thing a hug can fix. He knew it was ridiculous to expect her to be the same pilgrim girl she was two years ago. It was good enough that things had worked out, that she was alive. And yet, here he was in the middle of the night, feeling that familiar sense of longing. Wanting to hear that chirpy laugh, the sassy comebacks and witty diatribes: The third member of their odd little trio, ever since they’d met on the Citadel. Shepard shifted up, leaning his bare back against the headboard. What the hell was he doing? It had barely been a day.

Looking down past the ruffled quilt, he noticed the sweat stain on the mattress. Try as he might, he couldn’t piece the damn dream together. One minute he’d settled down in bed, finished with his reports. Then he was someplace warm, with dry wind blowing across an open space. There was salt in the air, and the kiss of sunlight on his skin. Everything was calm, still. Thinking about it now, the sensations reminded him of home. Mindoir was colder than Earth, but the air was often dry because of it. Sitting up on top of a pre-fab house, looking out over a geometric field. Crops planted by machines, tended by machines. Most times it’d been early morning, ironically cold and damp: But high up, above everything else. That’s what he’d felt in the dream. That he was somewhere high, looking out over an endless expanse. The few places he’d been on Earth matched one or two facets of the half-recalled landscape, but none fully embodied the scene: Salt water, high cliffs, heat and wind. Whatever his mind had conjured had been pleasant… at first.

But soon enough, things began to shift. The air disappeared, hissing away through cracks in the world. Warmth became searing heat, the rich sunlight blazing white down on him. His skin sizzled under it. There were sounds, voices, things poking and prodding. The harder he tried to picture it, the further from focus it went. Soon only the pain lingered in his mind: A biting, clawing, slicing pain. Skin and muscle opened up, peeled and pulled aside: The feeling of… something, violating the mortal barrier of flesh. Shepard pushed the covers back, trying not to focus on how the dampness continued down to his feet. He tried to remember if this nightmare had cropped up before. The other nights aboard the Normandy had seemed fine. The thought exercise got a momentary tremor out of him. He realised he couldn’t actually recall those first nights. Everything else was there, from tedious run-arounds, to missions and the rare times spent with friends or colleagues. But everything past that, it was just gone. The realisation disconcerted him. More than that, it angered him: Just another reminder of his new, altered state

Painfully aware he wasn’t getting back to sleep anytime soon, Shepard forced himself up and out of bed. He’d have to get a handle on this. His line of work wasn’t too lenient on people who didn’t get proper sleep. He ran a hand across his dry, sore throat. A drink was as good an excuse as any. Bending down to pick up the discarded pieces of his Cerberus uniform, the commander pulled his old clothes back on. Leaving his boots behind, he padded silently on grey socks across the cabin before getting into the elevator. He needed some water, just to soothe the discomfort. A chance to get some air sounded good too, if you could do such a thing aboard a starship. The crew deck was quiet and empty when Shepard stepped out. The door to main quarters was closed, but loud snoring carried past it regardless. Gardner probably.

Turning the corner into the mess hall, he walked over to the fridge. Slipping a cup under the water dispenser, he stole a look over to the sleeper pods that lined the raised tier leading to the forward cannon. Only a few were in use, the glass panels having fogged over to offer the occupants some privacy. The particularly large one belonged to Garrus; at least he was getting some sleep. Shepard’s gaze shifted over to the pod beside it. Occupied as well. He felt both happy and sad, followed by a pang of guilt. It was a childish wish, but he’d hoped to catch Tali out here, sitting alone at the table. Just the two of them, whiling away the wee hours together, like old times. He finished the glass and shook the memory from his mind. He should be grateful she was sleeping… he was.

Setting the cup inside the dishwasher, he decided it was best not to hang around. Heading back toward the elevator, something made the man pause. He turned, looking down past the dividing wall to Miranda’s office. The light on the door was green; she was still up. Tired and sore, Shepard felt frustration already building up inside him. He decided then and there, that enough was enough. No matter her position, she wouldn’t be repeating her earlier behaviour again. He padded towards the door, tapping the hologram. It opened to reveal the dark-haired woman hunched over her desk. This was the second time he’d seen Miranda without the façade she so effortlessly carried at all other times. No makeup, no black and white bodysuit. The comfortable clothes she wore were all black again, no Cerberus logos this time. Her hair was messy, but not like before. Instead of being perfectly coiffed or tied back in a ponytail, it hung wildly around her features. Bedraggled like this, her look brought back chilling memories of the Project Lazarus videos. He’d barely come through the door before her blue eyes were on him.

“Yes?” Miranda asked, perfectly neutral in tone. It only grated him more.

“We need to talk.” Shepard said calmly, but leaving no room for argument.

“Alright.” She nodded to the chair in front of her. “Have a seat.”

“Just stop.” Shepard didn’t mask his annoyance. He leaned his hands on her desk, looking down at her.

“What kind of game are you playing?” He asked, gripping the metal. “Do you get off on undermining my authority, harassing my crew?”

“I’m not the one playing games, Shepard.” She answered him curtly, holding his gaze.

“Then what the hell was that stunt in the CIC? Tali’s barely on her feet an hour, and the first thing you do is insult her?”

“She shouldn’t even be here.”

The comment took Shepard aback.

“Excuse me?”

[scepticaladventure]

25  Gravity, Time and Light  6Sep18

Introduction In essence, Special Relativity is a systematic attempt to describe the physics of things that move fast, based up on postulates about light, and General Relativity is an attempt to include gravity. Hence a good question at the core of it all is “How does gravity affect the speed of light?” You might think this is a simple question but have a look at the Internet. Confusion reigns!

Sources of Confusion I think a lot of the confusion comes from lack of precision in the question. If Relativity has taught us anything it has taught us to be wary about simple questions about time, distance and speed. We have learnt we must first specify “Who is the observer and what is their situation?” We have learnt that the answers to simple questions about lengths, durations and speeds depend on how they are measured and in what circumstances are they measured - everything is relative.

Hence the speed of light in a strong gravitational field as measured by a local observer who is also embedded in that field might be different from a result obtained by a distant observer well away from the massive object creating the field.

It turns out that the speed of light is affected by a gravitational field, but so to (in fact hence) is local time keeping and so the local speed of light as measured by that local observer is the same as usual. The slowdown is undetectable. But from a more distant perspective the slowdown in the speed of light does become detectable.

Another source of confusion comes from the interrelated complexity between time, distance and speed. In a world where time can run fast or slow, distances can contract and Euclidean geometry may not hold true, the meaning of measurements and hence the quantification of physical properties becomes treacherous.

A third source of confusion comes from confused people teaching confused or confusing messages to innocent student, often with absolute conviction e.g. that the speed of light is a universal invariant that its always and everywhere the same.

What is Time? I was watching a science program the other day and the reporter asked a group of astrophysicists attending a theoretical physics conference in Ontario – what is time? Well they um’d and ah’d and said it was a difficult question and so on. They could not give a ready answer in plain English.

So let me have a go. Firstly the word itself covers two sorts of concepts – a way of tagging a river of events which may or may not be linked causally, and durations between events. Or to take a simple example – If you ask a time keeper at a sports event “What is the time?” she may reply “Do you mean the time of day, or the result of some competitor’s performance in an event?”

The underlying concept is causality. If an event A causes an event B then we say that A occurs before or simultaneously with Event B. No-one has ever witnessed causality running backwards, so we assume that it is a strictly one way affair.

When we come across physical phenomena with a repetitive regularity about them, such as the vibrations of a quartz crystal, we can use it to create a useful clock and hence create a measure of local time durations.

If we standardize such clocks to each other we can start to talk about the time more generally, and we can give an elementary answer to the question “what is the agreed exact time of day?”. But this is a man made convention. We have to be careful not to assume that our concepts can be applied well beyond the scope in which they were created. For example, we cannot assume that the whole Universe is embedded in some sort of all embracing river of time with a Universal standard clock somewhere.

Once we start to consider events on a cosmological scale, or in fast moving situations, we have come to understand that our normal day-to-day concepts of time do not suffice. Different observers can measure different time durations for the interval between the same two events. Time can be observed to run slow, not because clocks are distorted but because the finite speed of light means that the very concept of ‘what happens when’ needs to be reconsidered. Over and above that it turns out that time also runs slow in a gravitational field.

So time is nothing more than mankind’s attempt to quantify intervals between events. It is a manmade construct overlaid on reality, nothing more. It has no independent reality. In fact it can be considered to be a widely shared illusion. And a treacherous one at that.

Definitions and Standards of Measurement Let’s look at the simple equation c = D/T where c is the speed of light, D is a measure of distance travelled and T is a measure of time duration. For this to have any meaning we need an agreed way of measuring D and T and we need agreed units of measurement for both D and T. But where to start?

In the modern world our standards of measurement start with time.

Since the 1970’s there has been an international agreement that a standard second is defined by a set number of oscillations in the electromagnetic radiation (i.e. light) emitted by hyperfine transitions within Caesium 133 atoms held in certain conditions. A standard meter is then defined as being the distance travelled by this light in 1/299,792,458 standard seconds.

It then follows axiomatically that the standard speed of light is 299,792,458 meters per second. If nothing else this helps to pin down some terminology. But it does not mean that the actual speed of light will always be the same as the standard speed of light. A trivial example is if the light is travelling through glass. It’s slower. A more complicated example is if the light is travelling across a spiral galaxy.

Note that this whole approach to the definition of standards could have started in a different way. For example, a standard meter could have been defined as the distance between two scratches on a bar of metal held at a precise temperature in a specified location (e.g. Paris), and a standard second could then have been defined by the time taken for light to travel a set number of meters. Or a standard second could have been defined using an atomic clock and the speed of light could have been left out of it altogether, which is what used to happen before the current system was adopted.

There are three spatial dimensions and only one time dimension, so a democratic approach suggests we should start with defining distance and then move on to define time. Seriously though, length is a lot more observable and tangible than time. We can see and touch and run a ruler over the length of a thing. Time is invisible and intangible.

Timekeeping is always (as far as I can tell) based on motion of some sort, whether this be vibrations in a quartz crystal, the swing of a pendulum or the rotation of a planet. And since motion involves both distance and time, defining time durations based on the motions of things seems a little bit tricky. If time did not exist, how would we know anything was moving? The answer is that we could see things happening – things doing things to other things. Causality at work. But this would offer no guarantees about the nature of time. For example, if everything in the Universe speeded up by 10%, how could we tell?  

Furthermore, we know from experiments that time is affected by motion (Lorentzian time dilation) and by gravity (gravitational time dilation). So time is a rubbery phenomenon and in some situations it is a deceptive illusion.

Length is also affected by motion (Lorentzian contraction). This is a small effect in extreme circumstances, but it is nevertheless quite real. It was realized from experiments on the speed of light and came to become a key feature of the Theory of Special Relativity. But nobody, as far as I know, has been able to demonstrate length contraction in a simple experiment or demonstration. And I have never seen a photo-montage showing a Lorentz contracted object.

It is very difficult to hold up ruler against a physical object travelling at relativistic speeds in a straight line and be  able to record both ends at exactly the same time. The closest experiments I know of come from studies of high speed collisions between atomic nuclei at the Brookhaven Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. The heavy nuclei have a non-zero radius and the dynamics of the collisions give the results expected if the nuclei are Lorentz contracted into disks. However, the Brookhaven accelerator is not a linear accelerator and this brings into play the theoretical complications of rotating and accelerated systems (see for example the Ehrenfest rotating disc paradox). Determining the effective radii of the ions is also problematical.

The three spatial dimensions of an object in spacetime are tangible. You can see and touch and measure lengths, widths and heights. You can put a ruler next to them. Time durations on the other hand are anything but simple, especially if the object is moving. You need to specify the situation of the observer very carefully. You need to carry the same clock from one event to the other or else to use a carefully synchronised set of clocks.

Time is a consequential parameter. It is the consequence of causality. At heart maybe the only thing you can be sure of is that Event A causes Event B, then Event A occurs before Event B. This also creates the Arrow of Time. In other words time is a one way phenomenon. You can never re-measure the exact same time interval, nor can you ever measure a time duration in back to front order.

The usual way to bridge from the world of tangible spatial dimensions to a world that involves time, motion, momentum and energy is to involve the speed of light.

What is an Inertial Reference Frame? After studying the results of experiments by Bradley, Eotvos, Roemer and Fizeau (and presumably Michelson and Morley, which he failed to acknowledge) Einstein simply postulated that that the speed of light in vacuum in an inertial reference frame is always the same (299,792.458 km/sec).

By inertial reference frame he meant one which is not accelerating, rotating or in a gravitational field. A frame in which test particles weigh nothing and stay still or travel in straight lines unless compelled by a force to do otherwise.

I think that an inertial reference frame is a an idealized concepts which is impossible to find in practice. Everything in the Universe is either spinning, accelerating or affected by gravity.  It was and still is common to say that an inertial reference frame is aligned to the “fixed stars”. However, no-one ever clarifies whether such stars are in our galaxy or beyond it, and what such stars can possible have to do with local physics anyway.

I all my reading I cannot find clarity about whether a satellite in orbit constitutes an inertial reference frame or not. The satellite is undoubtedly within a gravitational field or else it could not be orbiting. But the apparent effects of gravity are undone by the fact that the satellite is in free fall. Or you could consider the force of gravity to have been annulled by the effects of centrifugal acceleration. Either way you look at it test particles inside the satellite will be weightless. So are atomic clocks in this situation subject to gravitational time dilation or not?

I think this is a good question. If the answer is that the gravitational potential at which the satellite orbits does slow down the onboard observers’ clocks then they can determine whether they are free falling in gravity field by measuring the frequency of signals received from deep space, a pulsar say, on their local clock. If the signals are coming in too quickly then their clock is running slow. So they can tell that they are in fact free falling in a gravity field. This violates the Einstein Equivalence Principle, even though some authors will try to wriggle out of it by saying that the experiment is not a local one.

If the answer is no then it suggests that gravitational time dilation only occurs when matter has weight. It also suggests that a centrifugal acceleration can undo gravitational time dilation. Both aspects would be worth deep consideration. There would be interesting implications for the Clock Postulate (see an earlier essay).

As far as I can tell the answer is yes, clocks aboard an orbiting satellite are still subject to a degree of gravitational time dilation, quite apart from Special Relativity effects.

Apart from that an orbiting space station is still a potential candidate to be a localized inertial reference frame. But we have to worry about possible rotational effects.

Sagnac interferometers could be used to detect any spinning of the satellite. If the satellite is managed so that there is no spinning detected in any direction then I guess that the satellite is pretty close to being an inertial reference frame. Now let us look out of the windows of the satellite. It is generally accepted that if telescopes were positioned so that they point at very distant galaxies then those telescopes would remain pointed at those distant galaxies.

But then observers on board the satellite would perceive the Earth going round and round the satellite every orbit. And the Sun and nearly stars would all be going around and around too. So is the satellite spinning or not?

You can see that inertial reference frames are not easy to define in practice!

Einstein and the Speed of Light Between 1905 and 1911 Einstein concentrated on generalizing his description of physics and developed an approach/model that has become known as the Theory of General Relativity. By 1911 he had concluded that in the presence of gravity the speed of light is not a fixed invariant. His model of Special Relativity had to be qualified and elaborated upon. The measured speed of light in a gravitational field becomes a variable depending upon the reference frame of the observer.

His logic is contained in his paper On the Influence of Gravitation on the Propagation of Light', Annalen der Physik, 35, 1911. This predates the full description of his General Theory of Relativity by four years. The result he came up with was expressed mathematically as c’ = (1 + Φ/c2).c   where Φ is the gravitational potential relative to the point where the speed of light is measured.

In other words, light appears to travel slower in stronger gravitational fields. There is a more complete description in Section 3 of ‘The Meaning of Relativity', A. Einstein, Princeton University Press (1955).

In 1915 Einstein revised this calculation to be c’ = (1 + 2Φ/c2).c  In other words he decided the effect was twice a great as he first thought.

Unlike in the inertial reference frames of Special Relativity, the measured speed of light in gravitational fields depends upon the reference frame of the observer. What one observer sees as true, another observer sees as not true, or at least slightly different.

If you wanted to be mischievous you could say that Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity is based upon his proposition that the speed of light is invariant, and his Theory of General Relativity is based upon his proposition that the speed of light is not invariant.

Time in a Gravity Well We know from the impressive achievements made in recent decades in developing GPS systems that atomic clocks at rest on the surface of the Earth run slower than identical clocks on orbiting satellites.

For GPS to work, atomic clocks on Earth have to be very well synchronised with identical clocks aboard specially designed satellites. There are a variety of relativistic effects in play but the main one is due to the fact that the earthbound clocks are in stronger gravity than the orbiting satellites. The effect of gravitation is slightly reduced by centrifugal accelerations caused by the spin of the Earth. The overall gravitational effect is about 45 microseconds per day.

The gravitational time dilation effect is then adjusted for smaller relativistic effects, the main one being a Special Relativistic time dilation because the satellites are moving fast relative to the earthbound clocks. This offsets the gravitational effect by about 7 microseconds per day, giving a net relative adjustment of 38 microseconds per day.

When the satellites were first deployed the scientists in charge were not totally confident how much fine tuning would be required to get perfect synchronisation, so they allowed for a large degree of post launch adjustment. Now they make most of the adjustments before launch.

Of course gravity can have a direct physical effect on clocks. For example, a pendulum clock could not work without it. But that it not what we are talking about here. We are talking about an impact on time itself.

The way I prefer to think about all this is to start with the experimental fact that gravity has an effect on the speed of light. Then I remind myself that the measure of time can be thought of as physical lengths divided by the speed of light. Hence time durations are affected by gravity. And then every physical quantity involving time, notably every form of energy, is also affected.

Shapiro Time Delay The Shapiro time delay effect, or gravitational time delay effect, is now regarded as one of the classic tests of General Relativity. Radar signals passing near a massive object take slightly longer to travel to a target and longer to return than they would if the mass of the object were not present. The time delay is caused by the slowing passage of light as it moves over a finite distance through a change in gravitational potential.

In “Fourth Test of General Relativity”, Physics Review Letters, 20 1265-1269, 1968, Irwin Shapiro wrote, “Because, according to the general theory, the speed of a light wave depends on the strength of the gravitational potential along its path, these time delays should thereby be increased by almost 2x10−4 sec when the radar pulses pass near the Sun. Such a change, equivalent to 60 km in distance, could now be measured over the required path length to within about 5 to 10% with presently obtainable equipment.”

This test was first confirmed by experiments that ‘bounced’ radar signals off the planet Venus when it was just visible on the far side of the Sun as seen from Earth. It has since been measured using Mercury as well, and also using satellites such as the Cassini probe.

Note that seen from afar the path taken by the photons is a curve in both directions. You might think that this is what makes them take longer, but that is not the best way to think of it. The photons are taking the quickest route possible, but they are still delayed by the presence of the gravity field of the Sun. They do actually slow down in the stronger gravity closer to the Sun.

Light in a Gravity Well If we throw a ball upwards in a gravity field the ball decelerates, comes to a temporary stop at the top of its trajectory, and falls again. If we throw it faster than the Earth’s escape velocity the ball can overcome the overall gravitational attraction of the Earth and fly off into space with a certain amount of residual velocity.

What happens to a photon ejected from the surface of the Sun? Several essays ago we discussed and decided that the photon arrives at its destination detector in a weakened state. By comparison to other photons we can deduce that it has less energy and momentum than when it started and the frequency of its effects upon being absorbed are slower. In other words it reveals that it has become red shifted.

Does this mean that photons must travel slower as they climb higher – just like the ball? No – not at all! In fact the opposite is true (to a tiny extent). In the above section we discussed that the speed of light is faster in a weak field than it is in a strong field, and this is an experimental fact. Therefore the speed of photons (as measured by a distant observer) actually increases as the photons move into a weaker and weaker gravitational field.

This seems paradoxical. The arriving photon is travelling faster when its arrives than when it started, as measured from afar, but it arrives with less energy than when it started.

To understand this I think it is useful to note that the speed of a photon (as observed from afar) has no bearing on its energy level. See my earlier essay about energy remaining the same when photons travel in media with different refractive indices. I think the energy of a photon is embodied in the packet of physical properties it takes with it rather than in the speed of that packet as deduced by an external observer.

So how then does the photon become weaker? And where did the energy that is no longer contained in the photon end up? In the example of the thrown ball, what is going on is that as the ball gains in potential energy it loses kinetic energy until eventually it stops moving for a moment and then starts to fall again. There is a tradeoff between potential energy and kinetic energy. The potential energy can be thought of a being stored in the gravitational interaction between the Earth and the ball.

Much the same thing seems to happen to a photon. As it gains potential energy it loses electro-magnetic energy so that when it arrives it is weaker (i.e. redshifted).

I think this is a partially adequate description of what happens. However, if you want to adopt the Einstein Equivalence Principle as literally true and in some ways a better description of reality, and if you want to replace the greatest force in the Universe with the mathematical trickery of curved spacetime, then you can also explain the result using the language of Doppler shifts related to accelerations in curved spacetime. It also gives the right answer, so it becomes a matter of choice which point of view you want to adopt.

If you do use Einstein’s General Relativity model then note that it is only the perturbation of the time term that is needed in order to come up with the observed results for gravitational redshifts. The full field equations are not needed and there is no need to call upon any warping in the spatial aspects of the spacetime geometry.

Textbook Conventions Textbook explanations of Special Relativity invariably adopt Einstein’s postulate that the speed of light is an invariant constant. Many go further and tidy up all their equations by putting c = 1 and measuring all distances in light-seconds. They then drop c out of all the equations. They also carry over this convention into General Relativity.

However, most of the interesting predictions and effects of General Relativity depend upon the speed of light not being an invariant constant. So (in my opinion) writing c=1 and then omitting it from the equations obscures and confuses the physics of interest. Likewise, defining the speed of light to be exactly 299,792,458 meters per second is confusing unless we call this the standard speed of notional light and allow for the fact that the actual speed of light is slightly different from this in nearly all situations of interest and experience.

Conclusions Light slows down in the presence of gravity and so it is not invariant. But what you measure as its speed depends on how you measure it. A local measurement will not detect any difference. The speed of light is fundamental to the concept, meaning and measurement of time. So unless you can get this sorted out in your own mind, your physics is destined to end up in a muddle. And you would not be alone!

[spacebrick3]

Hi! Random question, hope that's okay--something I like to know about stories in space and want to know about yours is how time works. Is it one of those "We left Earth not too long ago and still think in 24-hour days because it's convenient" deals or something completely different? Is time/age interpreted a whole new way or even manipulated by people/technology? (Sorry if you've already explained this elsewhere!)

Thanks for asking! I always love questions, no matter what they’re about!

Most of the timekeeping in the TLL and NC do still work on the 24-hour-day, 7-day-week, 365-day-year system since that is what works - people’s diurnal cycles are still adjusted for that, and by now it’d be too difficult to make the change. Since there’s no method of fast communication between systems, trying to standardize a new form of timekeeping would simply be too hard to standardize. Also, there’s no better standard. Humanity has colonized different planets, all with their own days/weeks/months/years, and so rather than trying to standardize them all, they’ve just simply continued on with Earth-standard timekeeping.

However, I am toying with the idea of the GSF, freed from the constraints of politics (and actually, as one system, able to make such a change) moving to a more metric-based system. Seconds would remain the same, but a minute would be 100 seconds, an hour would be 100 minutes, a day would be 10 hours, a week would be 10 days and a year 1000 days. So this gives us a full scale of about:

1 second

(1 decasecond) - 10 sec

1 minute - 100 sec

(1 decaminute) - 1000 sec

1 hour - 10,000 sec

1 day - 100,000 sec

1 week - 1,000,000 sec

(1 decaweek) - 10,000,000 sec

1 year - 100,000,000 sec

And the conversions:

1 GSF minute = 1.66 min.

1 GSF hour = 2.77 hour

1 GSF day = 1.15 day

1 GSF week = 1.65 week

1 GSF year = 3.17 year

What will be interesting is that there’s probably going to be universes the wormhole allows people to access that have different time flows - in some, it will flow faster, some slower, and some universes might not even have a time dimension at all. Whether that affects how time is kept remains to be seen - it doesn’t come up much in Empty Space now, as far as I know - or it might lead to different definitions of time that would be able to be constant across these flows.