History Main / Microts

* Wiki/TheOtherWiki lists [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unusual_units_of_measurement#Time several unusual time units,]] such as the 1.2096 second "microfortnight".

[[folder: Film]]

-->Time is marked visually by the position of the sun and moon - half, low, tilt and high are the words by which cats estimate their version of hours. Half is when the sun or moon is peeking over the horizon; Low is about a paw’s width from the horizon; Tilt is the range from Half to just before noon; and High (otherwise called noon or midnight) is when the sun or moon is at its highest, marking the middle of the day or night. Using these terms, a cat will not say “it took 4 hours”, but “it took from low-moon to tilt”.\\
Moons and half-moons are both recognized portions of time, but only moons are used commonly. Like with humans, a moon is about a month, chronicling the complete lunar cycle. A half-moon is harder to gauge, since it’s usually used in the context of remembering a recent event, but stands at around 10-15 days. The cats may instead describe the shape of the moon during the event being discussed, using closed, open, and the various descriptors inbetween.\\
Seasons are a larger chunk of time, and very hazily defined, bleeding into each other depending on the weather. Last year’s winter can be much shorter than this year’s, for example, if it was a little warmer or took longer to snow. A season being skipped over entirely is an omen of terrible things to come. The feline words for seasons refer to the conditions of the trees, roughly translatable to “leaf-bare” (winter/Shou), “new-leaf” (spring/Aora), “green-leaf” (summer/Hhen), and “leaf-fall) (autumn/Kih). There are a variety of other nicknames referring to things associated with these seasons which go in and out of popularity with the seasons themselves.

* There's a "bilisecond" (sic) in [[http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa326471%28v=vs.71%29.aspx Microsoft .Net SQL API.]] Documentation describes it as 1 billionth of a second. Actually, it's 1/1000th of a millisecond, i.e. a microsecond. There were suggestions that whoever designed the API had no idea of metric prefixes and assumed "milli-" to be 1 millionth and "billi-" 1 billointh. Or maybe named the unit after Bill Gates. And misspelled it.

** It is also canonically established that a year (a full revolution of the Disc) is 800 days and has eight seasons. This is never respected after being established, so a linked system of "short years" of 400 days and 4 systems was retconned in. If you're going forward along the turtle's left side in summer in an odd short year, you'll be going backwards on the right side in an even summer. To keep things simple, each short year has 13 months.

* In ''WesternAnimation/VoltronLegendaryDefender'', Alteans measure time in "ticks", which are slightly longer than seconds. The team spends a little time trying to work out the comparison. The second season expands on this: A decafeeb is somewhere between a years and a decade, a quintant are roughly a day, a varga seems to be about an hour, and a dobashes is more or less a minute. After a while, the Paladins manage to pick up on it.

* The ''Franchise/RatchetAndClank'' series typically uses "cubits"[[note]]a real life unit in ancient Mediterranean cultures representing the length of a forearm and hand, between 17 and 21 inches depending on the culture and era[[/note]] as a unit of length, combined with SI prefixes. For instance, an unexpectedly important part in ''VideoGame/RatchetAndClankToolsOfDestruction'' is a "3 3/4 centicubit hexagonal washer."

-->-- ''Series/RedDwarf'', "Emohawk: Polymorph II”

* In UsefulNotes/{{the Bronze Age|OfComicBooks}}, ''Franchise/{{Superman}}'' comics stated that Kryptonian time was divided into "dendars", their equivalent of a minute that consists of one hundred seconds, which implies that Kryptonians were ''very'' enthusiastic about the metric system.
* The ComicBook/NewKrypton story arc has the Kryptonians using a weird time unit, apparently of an order of magnitude similar to the minute.
* The Marvel ''[[ComicBook/TheTransformers Transformers Generation 1]]'' comic book series introduced two Cybertronian time units: a "Breem" (8.3 minutes) and a "Vorn" (83 years). Apparently, giant shape-shifting robots never bothered with units of time greater than 8.3 minutes and less than 83 years...[[note]]The use of 83 is of course a reference to to the fact that that 1983 was the year before the series came out.[[/note]]

** In ''[[ComicBook/RobinSeries Robin]]'' Annual #5, time aboard the GenerationShip Gotham is measured in cycles. One cycle is roughly equal to a year.

* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' uses "moons" as a "longer-than-a-week-but-shorter-than-a-year" measurement of time, and never specifies exactly how long a "moon" is. A common theory is that it's simply a pony-ism for "month" due to how its used and the association with lunar cycles. Thing is, in ''FIM'' the moon is controlled manually, and every ''other'' unit of time is unchanged, implying that it's not a standard month. [[WordOfGod According to the show's director]], "it's a unit of time with no human equivalent." It tends to be used when the writers don't want to worry too much about the timeline. To give a few examples:

* The Grays in ''Webcomic/GeneralProtectionFault'' measure time in "gandans". These are [[https://www.gpf-comics.com/archive.php?d=19990319 first mentioned]] when Planck says he and Pi will be "tortured for 1,000 gandans" for failing to abduct Fooker. When they [[https://www.gpf-comics.com/archive.php?d=20010927 reappear]] less than three years later, he admits that a thousand gandans is about fifteen seconds. Longer periods of time are measured in mega-gandans, giga-gandans, and so on.

* The Grays in ''Webcomic/{{GPF}}'' measure time in "gandans". These are [[https://www.gpf-comics.com/archive.php?d=19990319 first mentioned]] when Planck says he and Pi will be "tortured for 1,000 gandans" for failing to abduct Fooker. When they [[https://www.gpf-comics.com/archive.php?d=20010927 reappear]] less than three years later, he admits that a thousand gandans is about fifteen seconds. Longer periods of time are measured in mega-gandans, giga-gandans, and so on.

* ''Series/RedDwarf'': The Kinitawowi are shown to use hanaka is form of time measurement in “Emohawk: Polymorph II”. Five hanaka is noted to be exactly one minute (which would make one hanaka about 12 seconds).

-->-- ''Series/RedDwarf'', "Emohawk"

* In ''ComicBook/PaperinikNewAdventures'' we are shown the Evronian time units: the basic unit is the spetung, then we have the secron (ten spetungs), the minutron (100 secrons), the houron (24 minutrons), the dayron (12 hourons, 18 in the rink (final dayron in all monthrons but those of Tamit and Hoxon)), the monthron (15 dayrons organized in groups of 5, it's grossly equivalent to a month of the gregorian calendar and start halfway during our months) and the yearhon (12 monthrons, equivalent of an Earth solar year. Starts on 15 august). Yearhons are grouped into millennia, named after the reigning emperor (implying an emperor can live up to one thousand years, at which point its successor will kill him). Due having been created half-jokingly shortly before the [[spoiler: fall of the Evronian Empire]], Evronian time units appear only in one story. Also, the Evronian calendar has a couple in-jokes: 15 august (Earth equivalent to the start of the Evronian calendar) was the day of publication of the annual special issue (the Evronian calendar was attached to the 1999 special), and the names of the normal days (po, ra, da, qu, pa) are the initials of the phrase "Poche ragazze da quelle parti" ("there's little girls in your neighbourhood"), a joking answer the staff tended to give to particularly strange fan mails.

* Characters in ''Webcomic/AwfulHospital'' use 'layers'. A 'layer' is stated to be [[LeaningOnTheFourthWall about the amount of time it takes to read a page of the average webcomic.]][[note]]Since time isn't real in-universe, a 'layer' really does equal however much 'time' can be covered by one page of the webcomic, no matter how much or how little actually happens on that page.[[/note]] Other, more poorly-defined units of 'time' include 'spiralings' and 'cubeoids'.

* In ''Literature/TheMilkweedTriptych'', a character has to summon help from the [[EldritchAbomination alien Eidolons]], and asks them to gauge the time by a certain number of human heartbeats.

* In ''Plan 7 of 9 from Outer Space'' a hostile [[PlantAliens plant alien]] demands the human authorities hand over twenty ''gurqs'' of uranium (a ''gurq'' is equivalent to one Earth kilogram) and a hundred ''geeks'' of fertilizer (a ''geek'' is equivalent to the weight of one sci-fi fan) within one ''neegath'' (equivalent to one Earth hour minus 0.0095746338th of a microsecond). There are also ''neeps'', each equivalent to one Hollywood minute: a [[MagicCountdown circumstantially-variable duration of time]].

-->''Time is marked visually by the position of the sun and moon - half, low, tilt and high are the words by which cats estimate their version of hours. Half is when the sun or moon is peeking over the horizon; Low is about a paw’s width from the horizon; Tilt is the range from Half to just before noon; and High (otherwise called noon or midnight) is when the sun or moon is at its highest, marking the middle of the day or night. Using these terms, a cat will not say “it took 4 hours”, but “it took from low-moon to tilt”.\\

Seasons are a larger chunk of time, and very hazily defined, bleeding into each other depending on the weather. Last year’s winter can be much shorter than this year’s, for example, if it was a little warmer or took longer to snow. A season being skipped over entirely is an omen of terrible things to come. The feline words for seasons refer to the conditions of the trees, roughly translatable to “leaf-bare” (winter/Shou), “new-leaf” (spring/Aora), “green-leaf” (summer/Hhen), and “leaf-fall) (autumn/Kih). There are a variety of other nicknames referring to things associated with these seasons which go in and out of popularity with the seasons themselves.''

* ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' uses "moons" as a "longer-than-a-week-but-shorter-than-a-year" measurement of time, and never specifies exactly how long a "moon" is. A common theory is that it's simply a pony-ism for "month" due to how its used and the association with lunar cycles. Thing is, in ''FIM'' the moon is controlled manually, and every ''other'' unit of time is unchanged, implying that it's not a standard month. [[WordOfGod According to the show's director]], "it's a unit of time with no human equivalent." It tends to be used when the writers don't want to worry too much about the timeline.

* A "sargon" is sometimes mockingly used as a unit of time equal to 5 minutes. This comes from an infamous incident where someone made a video criticizing of You Tube personality Sargon Of Akkad for using LogicalFallacies, relying on bad reasearch, and the like as well as implying he was immature. Sargon himself responded by basically saying [[IResembleThatRemark "Oh please, can't you summarize this in 5 miuntes? I don't have the patience to sit through half an hour of this!"]]

* Often used in the ''Franchise/StarTrek'' [[Franchise/StarTrekNovelVerse Novel Verse.]] For example, 6 human months equals about 4 Vostigye ronds, and nearly 40 Talaxian niziks. A Romulan Veraku is about 63 Earth minutes, and a Siuren is roughly 50 seconds.
** The novels actually have standardized terms for the full range of Vulcan, Romulan and Klingon time measurements, from seconds through to years. They're used quite often if these races are the POV characters in a given scene.

* Beginning with ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', stardates were (sort of) standardized to a year being 1,000 units long, with each unit being subdivided into 10 subunits. That would mean that 1 unit is equal to roughly 8 hours, a subunit is roughly 48 minutes, while a day is 3 units. Thus, the launch date of the ''Enterprise-D'', stardate 41153.7, correlates to February 20, 2364 at 5:36 am.
** In one episode, the Klingons use "turns" to describe years.
* ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''
** The planet in "Time and Again" used rotations, intervals, and fractions. And Hindu-Arabic numerals.
** Averted in "Prime Factors" when an alien gives a measurement based on the distance between the sun and her home planet, and Harry Kim mentally converts it to light years.
** A recently de-assimilated Seven Of Nine once [[NoSocialSkills attempted to participate in a conversation]] regarding children by remarking that "[[WouldHurtAChild Children]] [[HiveMind assimilated by the Borg]] are placed in maturation chambers for seven cycles". [[EpicFail That went over about as well as could be expected]]. The exact length of the "cycles" she mentioned was not stated, and considering the nature of the Borg could be anywhere from seconds to years (though probably closer to the latter).

* Parodied in the ''Series/StargateSG1'' episode "Wormhole X-Treme!" where one of the characters in the ShowWithinAShow used 'bleems' as a measurement of time comparable to years.