SY = PY - 20 ?

[SandChigger]

Taraza was momentarily abashed. This was an imposition. Teg was still a regal figure tall and with that large head topped by gray hair. He was, she knew, four SY short of three hundred. Granting that the Standard Year was some twenty hours less than the so-called primitive year, it was still an impressive age with experiences in Bene Gesserit service that demanded that she respect him.

Anyone ever come up with an explanation of why the Standard Year is "some twenty hours less" than a "primitive year"?

Assuming the latter is our standard, Terran year, when you google "hours in a year" you get

1 year = 8 765.81277 hours

Take 20 hours off that and you get

5100

Oh, sorry, wrong thread. Whoa...wrong FORUM!

Anyway, you get 8,745.81277 or, rounding, 8,746.

I first wondered if FH had just dropped the fraction of a day over 365 days in a Terran year:

1 year = 365.242199 days

but that gives only 5.812776 or 6 hours. Where do the other "14 some" come from?

Me, I would have taken off the extra days over 360 and regularized the sexagesimal nature of the reckoning system.

Any ideas as to what he had in mind?

[inhuien]

Nope, none at all.

My only thought is that Taraza's observation makes a difference of 246.6 day btw PY and SY.

[Omphalos]

Whatever planet was the center of government at the time the year was established for measurement purposes had one that was twenty hours off. The primitive year was an Earth year.

[SandChigger]

Nope, none at all.

My only thought is that Taraza's observation makes a difference of 246.6 day btw PY and SY.

In Teg's age, you mean.

You think it's something that simple (and unstated), Omph?

[Omphalos]

Yea, probably. The emperor owned everything and was all powerful. It makes sense that he or she would base measurement standards on whatever the cap. planet is. What do you think?

[Freakzilla]

Yea, probably. The emperor owned everything and was all powerful. It makes sense that he or she would base measurement standards on whatever the cap. planet is. What do you think?

Makes sense to me.

[Phaedrus]

Yea, probably. The emperor owned everything and was all powerful. It makes sense that he or she would base measurement standards on whatever the cap. planet is. What do you think?

Makes sense to me.

/agree

The SY was probably initiated early in the space colonization process, and at that time, efforts would be made to find earthlike planets...about the size of earth, with similar days, years, and maybe even a nifty satellite like our own.

20 hours would be a great (as in, not a lot) amount of deviance from earth, to be found lying around in a solar system somewhere. So it's not so far-fetched or oversimplified.

[SandChigger]

Brings up the question again of when the "Empire" began....

[SandChigger]

I was just thinking about this again and the implications.

The unrounded figure for the SY in hours above works out to 364.4089 days (or 364 d 9 h 49 m). Anyone care to work out the intercalary system for THAT?

I guess it just doesn't make sense to me to adopt the irregular year of one planet, whatever its political significance, galaxy-wide when the majority of other inhabited planets are going to have very different years. As I mentioned above, it would make far more sense to drop the 5.24 days (125.76 hrs), make that the standard and have everyone calculate off it. (Sort of like GMT.)

(This is off-topic, but is there any astonomical basis for the seven-day week? Or is it completely religious? It appears that up until 321 CE or so the Romans, for example, used an eight day week (seven work days and one market day) originally borrowed from the Etruscans. A seven-day week would make as little sense in a 360-day year as it does in a 365.24-day one. But a six-day week would be perfect: five weeks would make a 30-day month, and 12 months a year.)

Oh well, I guess we'll never know exactly what FH was thinking.

[inhuien]

In Teg's age, you mean.

Indeed, I sometines have trouble seeing a thought through......... oh look a flower

[SandChigger]

Ooh, pretty!

[Omphalos]

I never really understood the basis for a seven day week.

[SandChigger]

Evidently another of those stupid Middle Eastern traditions we are still encumbered with.

Eventually we'll grow up. None of us will live to see it, though.

[Fantômas]

[quote="SandChigger"]Evidently another of those stupid Middle Eastern traditions we are still encumbered with.

[chanilover]

Evidently another of those stupid Middle Eastern traditions we are still encumbered with.

Eventually we'll grow up. None of us will live to see it, though.

I thought the Sumerians were the first to use a seven day week, and the practice goes back to pre-history where people carved the waxing and waning of the Moon on bones, dividing the period into roughly four intervals of seven.

I think the major stubling block to our understanding as to why a period of seven days when it's illogical, and why arbitrarily choose the year from one politically-important planet and impose that on the rest of the universe as the Standard Year, is because we're approaching it from a rational, democratic viewpoint (and if I can say so, an overwhelmingly American one).

The fact that we still use a seven day week isn't just a hangover of a redundant Middle Eastern tradition, it's an echo of the past. The cultural vandalism which has occurred in Iraq, the cradle of human civilisation, after its occupaton by US and UK forces is sign enough of how delicate humanity's shared heritage is.

I'm a believer in the viewpoint that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" and the thought of ditching centuries of human tradition just because it's not logical enough is a bit depressing.

As for the Standard Year, yes, it is completely believable for an emperor to establish a uniform time period across his empire and arbitrarily choose one planet's year as the standard. It's not a democracy, and it's in line with similar actions by newly-installed emperors in the past. If the Empress Wu of China could legally declare herself a man, there's no reason why a future despot couldn't affect standard time-keeping of his empire for millinnia after his death by a decision made purely on a whim.

[Omphalos]

I guess it just doesn't make sense to me to adopt the irregular year of one planet, whatever its political significance, galaxy-wide when the majority of other inhabited planets are going to have very different years. As I mentioned above, it would make far more sense to drop the 5.24 days (125.76 hrs), make that the standard and have everyone calculate off it. (Sort of like GMT.)

This is entirely relative. Its possible that the planet chosen does have a round number of days, assuming that the length of a day was changed a little bit by the Imperium. We don't know the answer to that. But its probably more likely that a planet could not be found that had a 365.00000000000 day year, so leap year was probably put in there somewhere.

Though it would get confusing not going with local time and Empire time on legal documents and the like.

[SandChigger]

I'm intrigued by the association of the three terms rational, democratic and American.

The first two have always had a very tenuous connection, and that of the third to the others grows more so by the day. But that's just my opinion, and I'm an elitist according to Kevin.

I never intended to suggest that Omph's explanation wasn't plausible, only that it seems to me a silly way of organizing things. But such is government in the hands of a few. Or the one.

(I also think it's a bit of a stretch linking the rationalization of a system of timekeeping once the physical foundations for its irregularities have become largely irrelevant [in the future, when we are spread across multiple worlds and systems] with the "cultural vandalism" occurring during a war which should never have happened in the first place. I'm not suggesting we do away with our current calendar while on this planet. And I'm sure Caesar and Gregorius met with similar opposition when they proposed their changes. Hell, Russia didn't adopt the Gregorian Calendar until the 20th Century.)

[Phaedrus]

Brings up the question again of when the "Empire" began....

It doesn't have to be the same Empire as the one we see in Dune. I wouldn't expect an intergalactic empire using sublight spaceships to last for long, but it could have lasted for long enough to impress a Standard Year on the population. Especially if everyone programmed their computers to the SY. Dur knows reprogramming dates and times is a bitch.

[SandChigger]

I was referring back to an abortive exchange on whether there was an Emperor prior to the Jihad.

Galactic empires of more than a few very close systems are probably just a fantasy with only STL ships; you just can't move your muscle around fast enough. I know the British Empire, linked by sail and steam ships, is often proffered as a counter-example to that, but the differences in scale render it ridiculous, really.

We're going to run into this timekeeping problem for real as soon as people are living permanently offworld, in orbital stations, on the moon, and on Mars.

We're probably bound physiologically to something very close to a 24-hour cycle (Know if NASA/anyone has done studies yet on the acceptable extremes?), but the rest of it is pretty much an accident of circumstance. Even a 360 day cycle wouldn't have much meaning to the crew of a generation ship headed for Alpha Centauri, eh? (It'd make more sense for them to keep a shipday/shipyear record, correlated to the dates back home. )

(Afterthought: I guess the lunar cycle is also physiologically signficant, no? At least for half of us. )

[Phaedrus]

I always have to wonder how much we're bound to these chronological cycles due to biology, and how much we're bound due to conditioning. I'd prefer to think that a good bit of it is conditioning, but I imagine most is biological.

I've heard of various sleep schedules that vary from the norm, but I think the rule is that 8 hours out of every 24(1 out of 3 for those who are mathematically challenged ) have to be spent asleep, one way or another. Whether that's done through multiple naps during the day, a long period at night, or various long periods throughout the week, at different times, you've got to fill that quota. And from personal experience, the human body doesn't operate very well after 20-30 hours without sleep. I'm sure there's some variance on that from person to person... I also hear that abnormal sleep schedules can cause insanity, and that they're hard to stay on for any extended periods of time. However, I don't know whether that's due to the need for natural sunlight and melatonin production at night or what.