History Main / TwoOfYourEarthMinutes

* The transdimensional aliens (Conceptoids) from ''WebComic/AwfulHospital'' scorn the concept of time altogether and always mock Fern right to her face for using it. They measure by [[{{Microts}} layers,]] which only pass when they want them to. Or something. Layers are a kind of TimeyWimeyBall and a "[[PunyEarthlings Greyzoner]]" would only get a migrane trying to figure them out because of a lack of RequiredSecondaryPowers.

* Before the metric system was adopted as the standard by most countries, different countries used different weights and measurements which confusingly were called the same names (e. g. "mile", "foot", "inch", "pound" in English, "Meile", "Fuß", "Zoll", "Pfund" in German). It can sometimes be seen today between Imperial and Metric system users, e. g. in common parlance many users of the metric system still use their language's word for "pound" for 500 grams. The differences could be huge, e. g. between what would in German be called an "Englische Meile" (ca. 1.6 km) and a "Deutsche" or "Geographische Meile" (ca. 7.5 km).

*** Not to mention the quirkiness of the imperial system gives us three different gallons (one British and two American, one liquid and one [rarely used] dry) and three different families for weights (avoirdupois weights for most things, troy weights for precious metals and the now obsolete apothecaries' weights for pharmaceuticals).

* A solar day on Mars (called a "sol") is 24 hours 39 minutes 35.244 seconds long. Therefore, people working with Mars Rovers have to go by a working schedule based on sols, not days -– they start work about 40 minutes later every Earth day, and use Martian "hours" and "minutes" that are about 1.0275 times the length of their Earth equivalents. Many people working on the MER project had wristwatches specifically calibrated to Martian time.

* As odd as it sounds the British and Americans have/had different billions; in British English a billion is (or was) a million million (i.e. 1,000,000,000,000), while in American English it has always equated to a thousand million (i.e. 1,000,000,000). ''Series/{{QI}}'' once looked into this and was curious which one the Bank of England uses, apparently the person answering the phone said it was sure to be English but double checked; returning to the phone to meekly confirm it was the American billion. Of course the same problem pops up with a Trillion too.
** You also have this in relation to other languages, for instance German (''eine Billion'' is a million million, ''eine Billiarde'' is a thousand million million).
*** That's even before you get to places like Israel, where they use the Short Scale, just like in the US... Except one thousand million is called a ''milyard''. One million million is still unambigiously called a ''trilyon'', but there's still the [[JewsLoveToArgue inevitable]] agruments over whether one thousand million million is a ''trilayrd'' or a ''quadrilyon''.
*** The Oxford English Dictionary still lists "milliard" as a synonym for "thousand million", noting that it is "largely superseded by billion". Presumably "billiard" and "trilliard" etc. would be acceptable constructions, but the former already has an entirely unrelated meaning.

* The ''Franchise/MassEffect'' series mostly has a very well-thought-out galactic culture, so it's truly strange in the third game, when everyone starts going out of their way to give units of time in "solar days" (it's unlikely to be TranslationConvention, either, since they're all round numbers). Why not Citadel Days, or Thessia Days? No explanation is ever given.
** This point is spoofed in [[http://awkwardzombie.com/index.php?page=0&comic=090511 this Awkward Zombie strip]].

* In the {{Trope Namer|s}} ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy1'', the commander of the Vogon Contructor fleet addresses everyone on Earth. He states that demolition of Earth "will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes". Granted, working out a population's units of time just to use it to tell them precisely how long they have before all being killed, and consciously pointing out that they've taken the trouble, is a typically Vogon thing to do.

* Ax, the ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}''' resident alien, always gives time intervals in "your minutes" -- no matter how many times the others tell him not to do so. In later books he develops a sense of fun about it.
-->'''Ax:''' We have twenty-six of your minutes left.\\

* The Creator/EdWood B-Movie ''Film/Plan9FromOuterSpace'' has an alien refer to "a can of your gasoline." Apparently, gasoline exists nowhere else, or he's digging at the quality of Earth gasoline. Or, maybe he's just poorly written.

* In ''Film/MenInBlack'' the Arquellian message displaying a timer labeled "Earth Time Remaining", counting down the hour.
-->'''Arquellians''': Return [[MacGuffin the Galaxy]] to us or Earth will be destroyed. [[ApologeticAttacker Sorry.]]

* ''Film/TheLostSkeletonOfCadavra'' overlaps with SuspiciouslySpecificDenial:
-->'''Kro-Bar''': Aliens? Us? Is this one of your Earth jokes?\\

* In ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|1978}}'', it's {{lampshade|Hanging}}d in the episode "Greetings From Earth" where the Terran colonist asks, "Wait just a minute, what's a 'centon'?"
** Likewise in "Experiment in Terra", when Starbuck tells a different colonist he'll be back in a "centar":

** In the re-imagined 2003 series, they generally use what the audience would consider standard measurements: they've mentioned that a "day" has 24 hours in it, 365 days a year. It's not clear if this is some sort of universal fleet time that the Twelve Colonies agreed upon as an average of their local times or if it is based on Caprica-time. One exception is that their unit of distance is an "SU" (Solar Unit) instead of an "AU" (Astronomical Unit) - which in real life is based on the distance between Earth and the sun. Seeing as they're from twelve different planets in a double binary star cluster, using an "AU" wouldn't make much sense.

** A weird and somewhat baffling variation occurs in the episode "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E89ToServeMan To Serve Man]]", when the human protagonist onboard a flying saucer in transit asks his alien [[spoiler:captors]] what time it is, only to be told there isn't one, because there's no way to measure time in space, to which the hero responds "What time is it ''on Earth''?" (Presumably, he means in his home timezone.)
** "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS3E95HocusPocusAndFrisby Hocus-Pocus and Frisby]]". After Mr. Frisby is lured into a flying saucer, the aliens' leader tells him that they will be taking off in "fourteen minutes, by your measure of time".

** A weird and somewhat baffling variation occurs in the episode "To Serve Man", when the human protagonist onboard a flying saucer in transit asks his alien [[spoiler:captors]] what time it is, only to be told there isn't one, because there's no way to measure time in space, to which the hero responds "What time is it ''on Earth''?" (Presumably, he means in his home timezone.)
** "Hocus-Pocus and Frisby". After Mr. Frisby is lured into a flying saucer, the aliens' leader tells him that they will be taking off in "fourteen minutes, by your measure of time".

[[folder:Fan Fic]]

[[folder:Film]]

-->'''Ax:''' We have twenty-six of your minutes left.
-->'''Marco:''' We're on Earth, Ax. They're ''everyone's'' minutes.
-->'''Ax:''' ''[quite deliberately]'' We now have twenty-five of ''your'' minutes.

--->"...fifteen of your miles."
--->"You don't have to say 'your miles'. They're everybody's miles."
--->"What about the countries that use kilometers? See? I am learning!"

---->'''Ax''': We have seventeen minutes left.
---->'''Marco''': (after a pause) Seventeen ''minutes''?
---->'''Ax''': (correcting himself) Seventeen of your Earth minutes.

[[folder:Live Action TV]]

-->'''[=McCoy=].''' Isn't it a little unusual for a Vulcan to retire at your age? After all, you're only a hundred and two.
-->'''Sarek.''' One hundred two point four three seven precisely, Doctor, measured in your years.

-->'''Commissioner Bele''': For fifty thousand of your terrestrial years, I have been pursuing Lokai through the galaxy.

-->'''High Adviser Plasus''': I've been here nearly an hour of your Earth time.

-->'''Balok''': We therefore grant you ten Earth time periods known as "minutes" to make preparations.

-->'''Sub-commander Tal''': We give you one of your hours. If you do not surrender your ship at the end of that time, your destruction is certain.

-->'''Apollo''': We knew your Earth well, five thousand of your years ago.

* In a sketch on ''Series/ABitOfFryAndLaurie'', a shopkeeper tells a customer "That will be twenty of your Earth pounds". In another sketch, a gameshow contestant is informed that he has "thirty Earth seconds" to answer.
* The Imperial Master in ''Series/StarFleet'' informs his subordinates that they have two Earth months to complete their mission, despite the fact that there's no reason to use their enemy's time system when talking to each other...
* Inverted in ''Series/{{Stingray 1964}}'': Triton and other seafolk use Marine Minutes and Marine Seconds, and call their timespans such, even with no humans around.
* ''Series/DoctorWho''
** A very silly example in "Daleks in Manhattan". Just as the gamma radiation is about to strike the Empire State Building, the Daleks declare there are '40 Rels left' then immediately starts counting down in seconds! What, is the Rel just the Skaro term for second?
*** A non-canonical 1966 feature film implied that there were precisely 50 rels to an Earth minute, making one exactly 1.2 seconds.
** The inverse of this happens in another episode. "The Time Monster" featured a rather phallic device (seriously, [[https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/The_Time_Monster_1-6_avi-20080703-075830_3722.jpg it must be seen to be believed]]) for detecting the Master's TARDIS which was calibrated in feet and miles... only they were Venusian feet and miles.
** And in the episode "The Creature from the Pit" Erato tells the Doctor to hold the beam for "five of your seconds" -- even though the Doctor is no more from Earth than it is.
** "The Chase" has the Daleks referring to time in "Earth minutes", even when they are talking among themselves and there are no humans present.
* ''Series/SheSpies'' episode 11. "He was supposed to be here three of your American days ago."
* Played for laughs in the ''Series/RedDwarf'' episode "Emohawk";
-->'''Kryten''': They're giving us five hanaka to decide.
-->'''Rimmer''': How long's a hanaka?
-->'''Kryten''': Curiously enough, the same as one Earth minute.
-->'''The Cat''': Five hanaka? That only gives us twenty-eight hours!
* Spoofed in ''Series/BuffyTheVampireSlayer'' as Xander twists his and Willow's infidelity to their significant others to be their fault - Buffy comments "Your logic does not resemble our Earth logic."
* In ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|1978}}'', it's {{lampshade|Hanging}}d in the episode "Greetings From Earth" where the Terran colonist asks, "Wait just a minute, what's a 'centon'?"
** Likewise in "Experiment in Terra," when Starbuck tells a different colonist he'll be back in a "centar":
---> '''Brenda:''' Whatever that is, I hope it's less than an hour.
** In the re-imagined 2003 series, they generally use what the audience would consider standard measurements: they've mentioned that a "day" has 24 hours in it, 365 days a year. It's not clear if this is some sort of universal fleet time that the Twelve Colonies agreed upon as an average of their local times or if it is based on Caprica-time. One exception is that their unit of distance is an "SU" (Solar Unit) instead of an "AU" (Astronomical Unit) - which in real life is based on the distance between Earth and the sun. Seeing as they're from twelve different planets in a double binary star cluster, using an "AU" wouldn't make much sense.
* In the ''Series/BuckRogersInTheTwentyFifthCentury'' episode "Flight of the War Witch," a Draconian reports tracking a Terran starfighter which is traveling "at a fraction of their light speed." ''Their'' light speed? Terrans have ''their own'' light speed?
* ''Series/LostInSpace'' episode "Hunter's Moon". Professor Robinson is told that [[HuntingTheMostDangerousGame the hunt he will be forced to be a part]] of will last sixty Earth minutes.

* ''Series/TheOuterLimits1963''
** Episode "Nightmare". During the episode, one of the POW's arms is completely shattered. While the Ebonite interrogator is talking to two United Earth officers, he says that the POW will not regain the use of his arm "for a year or more in your measure" (i.e. Earth time).
** Episode "Second Chance". The alien tells a retired physicist that an asteroid is going to hit his home planet of Empyria. When the physicist asks him when the collision will occur, the alien says "In your time scale, 82 years".
* ''Series/BlakesSeven''. Justified when the HumanAliens are implied to be the descendants of colonists from Earth.
-->'''Pella:''' There's a switch. When the door is closed, every forty-eight hours Dorian must say a code word to reset the timing.\\
'''Vila:''' Is that forty-eight hours Standard Time?\\
'''Pella:''' Earth Standard Time. This planet is very like Earth, I think. That is why the Seska came here.

* Happens sometimes in ''WesternAnimation/MegasXLR'': one line has Kiva mentioning a place far away, to which Jersey City native Jamie says "Far as in Planet of the Alien Bounty Babes, or far as in Hoboken?".
* The King of Yugopotamia in ''WesternAnimation/TheFairlyOddParents'', during the Halloween special: "I shall mourn over my son for 5,000 Yugopotamian days..." Beat. "Okay, I'm done. Unfreeze one of his clones!" Also, Mark says he is getting a reading "50,000 Yugopotamian miles from here!" Earth units? 2 inches.

* The ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' episode "Trapper Keeper" featured [[Franchise/{{Terminator}} a robot from the future]] named "Creator/BillCosby" who kept slipping up and putting "hu-man" in front of nouns.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheAvengersEarthsMightiestHeroes'' has the Skrull leader say that they have been holding Captain America for two of their Earth months.
* ''WesternAnimation/SpaceGhostCoastToCoast'': "I've actually been a talk show host for a thousand years, but it doesn't seem like it because on my home planet it's still only Tuesday...Tuesday...my guitar lesson!"
* On ''WesternAnimation/ReadyJetGo'', the Propulsions tend to talk like this. For example, in "Jet Cooks Dinner", Celery says that 6 Bortronian months is the equivalent of one Earth hour.

* The ''WesternAnimation/SouthPark'' episode "Trapper Keeper" featured [[Film/{{Terminator}} a robot from the future]] named "Creator/BillCosby" who kept slipping up and putting "hu-man" in front of nouns.

--->'''Head Female Theela''': To survive we must vitalize each 27 years of your time.

When two civilizations with different home-worlds, and thus different years, hours, and so on interact, referring to "your" time units or "(planet name) time units" is entirely correct, it's the redundancy of using both "your" and the name of the planet which makes this an awkward phrasing.

[[TruthInTelevision Happens to some degree in real life]], in situations such a Brit talking to an American about "two of your gallons" - [[SeparatedByACommonLanguage but this is exactly because Britain and the US use the same word to mean different volumes]]. (1 Imperial gallon == 1.2 American gallons.) Likewise, just as "minute" comes from the Latin for a small division, the aliens may have a time unit named after their word for a small division. But if not, there is little point specifying that it is an 'Earth Minute'... Unless it's mocking or derogatory, like most real-life uses of the trope in metric vs. imperial situations. "Your years" makes more sense as the duration of a planet's orbit around its sun would be different for each world.

* The rules for the ''Manga/DeathNote'' inconsistently fall into this. {{Justified|Trope}} since Ryuk wrote the rules in English specifically so humans could understand them. Presumably he calculated shinigami time spans into human measurements where appropriate as well.

* In ''ComicBook/{{Nextwave}}'', a representative of the Beyond Corporation summons Dread Rorkannu, Lord of the [[strike:Dark]] Dim Dimension, to ask to rent out his minions, and offers him a hundred dollar bill as payment. Rorkannu holds the money triumphantly, saying "Yes! I have a hundred of the Earth dollars!" Presumably, this refers to the [[UsefulNotes/AmericanMoney most dominant by far]] among the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar#Economies_currently_using_the_dollar many Earth currencies called dollars]].

* [[DiscussedTrope Discussed]] in a ''Film/GalaxyQuest'' comic, when a guide leading the crew across an alien planet says, "We will see the city within 30 ''boule''." Alexander grouses that he doesn't understand why the UniversalTranslator can change any language to English, and yet leaves units of distance and time untranslated. Tommy replies, "At least he didn't say 'in 30 of your Earth miles', or something. Man, I ''hate'' that."

* Spoofed in ''Film/AmazonWomenOnTheMoon''. The Queen of the eponymous moon-dwellers boasts that her civilization has existed for millions of "Gamma-Spans", and hastily exposits that a Gamma-Span is [[ArtisticLicenseAstronomy "roughly equivalent to one of your Earth years."]] Though the Moon is the one place in the universe which is guaranteed to have ''the same'' average duration of "years" as Earth, Gamma-Spans could refer to sidereal years, which are longer than tropical years due to precession.

* Averted for comedy in ''Film/MenInBlack'', where an eponymous organization deals an ultimatum with a [[RaceAgainstTheClock time limit of one "Galactic Standard Week"]], which is explained to [[JustForFun/IThoughtItMeant be one hour Earth time]]. Immediately played straight afterwards, with the Arquellian message displaying a timer labeled "Earth Time Remaining", counting down the hour.

** At another point in the movie, Agent J returns to headquarters and is puzzled why the same staff members are still active, despite it being very late at night. He half-sarcastically asks Zed if anyone ever gets any sleep there, to which Zed explains that they actually operate on Centaurian Time, which has a standard 37-hour day. He assures that J will get used to it after a few months - either that, or have a psychotic breakdown.

* In the {{Trope Namer|s}} ''Literature/TheHitchhikersGuideToTheGalaxy1'', the commander of the Vogon Contructor fleet addresses everyone on Earth.
** He states that demolition of Earth "will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes". Granted, working out a population's units of time just to use it to tell them precisely how long they have before all being killed, and consciously pointing out that they've taken the trouble, is a typically Vogon thing to do.

* Ax, the ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}''' resident alien, always gives time intervals in "your minutes"--no matter how many times the others tell him not to do so. In later books he develops a sense of fun about it.

* {{Inverted|Trope}} in ''Literature/DogWizard'' by Creator/BarbaraHambly, where a wizard exposits this flaw in the ''spell of tongues''. Later, when an alien has stated that his equipment can keep everybody safe for only two hours, he's startled when the heroine comments that time is almost up 100 minutes later -- it's not even been one "hour" as far as he's concerned.
* Franchise/StarTrek novels
** Creator/DianeDuane's ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' novel ''Literature/MyEnemyMyAlly'' has the ''Enterprise'' arranging a rendezvous with a Romulan vessel. When setting the time, Kirk tells Uhura to give the Romulans a second-tick for reference; the officer he's speaking to tells him they know what a second means to Terrans. Meanwhile the glossary at the back of ''Literature/TheRomulanWay'' specifies that a Rihannsu "minute" is actually 50.1 Terran seconds long.
** One of the ''Series/StarTrekDeepSpaceNine'' novels involved an alien threat with an absurdly specific (into the tenths of seconds, IIRC) deadline; the characters simply assumed it came out roundly in the aliens' units.
* Averted in Creator/AlanDeanFoster's ''Literature/HumanxCommonwealth'' novels, where such Earth-derived time units are concisely referred to as "t-years" or the like. Presumably the "t" stands for Terra, and years on Hivehome would be "h-years".

** Truth in television. People that spend most of their professional lives dealing with tonnes (1000 kg) will tend to approximate with "several tonnes" when writing even if they're from the US where tons (2000 lb = 908 kg) are the native unit. It is entirely believable that people working in a spaceship that uses terrestrial hours, years, etc as a standard time would default to those units whenever they aren't thinking about it.
* Inverted in Creator/SpiderRobinson's ''[[Literature/CallahansCrosstimeSaloon Callahan's Secret]]'', where the group on Earth makes telepathic contact with the approaching alien and explains what a second is "This interval [ ] is a second" and give the alien 30 of them to comply. The alien realizes that since a second is a meaningful interval for thought, the folks on Earth were vastly inferior.

* Creator/IsaacAsimov's "Literature/TheLastTrump": This ShortStory revolves around the Devil's apparent triumph over God, having convinced Him/Her/It to bring about Judgement Day on Earth, thus "winning" since humanity as a whole has not yet conformed to the divine plan. However, the angel whose job is to watch over the Earth protests this move and eventually manages to get Judgement Day overturned since God's decree of when the Earth would end referred to a specific date, apparently based on the Gregorian calendar, but the angel points out that nowhere in the decree itself was the specific calendar system identified. Since there are so many different calendar systems in use on Earth, and they cannot just randomly pick one, Judgement Day cannot actually occur and the Earth continues as it always has. The story ends with the Devil, accepting that his immediate plan was foiled, planning a global calendar revision to mark the beginning of the "Atomic Era" for all mankind.
* Here's another weird one: in ''Discworld/ThiefOfTime'', the History Monks have had to rebuild the structure of time after it became fragmented, synchronizing all of history using a unit of duration based on the human pulse rate. Presumably this is because only the monks, themselves, had retained the ability to move and function after this catastrophe, so had to use their own physiology as the basis for timing everything else. Makes sense ... except the human pulse rate ''varies'' all over the place, based on age, physical condition, activity level and mood. So whose pulse, in what mood, and doing what, did they actually choose to base it on? The Literature/{{Discworld}} may be timed on "One of your 'Lu-Tse Taking A Siesta While Feeling A Bit Put Upon By All This' minutes"!
** Potential FridgeBrilliance - they're History ''Monks'', with AllMonksKnowKungFu in full effect. Even normal human athletes have a much more stable heart rate than less-fit people, so they could well just have perfectly stable heart rates.

* Subverted in Andrey Livadny's ''[[Literature/TheHistoryOfTheGalaxy Living Space]]'', where Sheila Norman is hooked up to a neural interface with a reactivated alien computer. The machine asks how long it has been off-line, and Sheila replies that it has been 3 million years, prompting the machine to clarify an unknown unit of measurement. She defines a year as the time for a full orbit around a star. The machine further attempts to clarify exactly what orbit she's talking about. Finally, it just scans her mind for the location of Earth and finds the planet in its database. Then it off-handedly comments that its creators visited Earth in the [[AncientAstronauts past]] and may have accidentally been responsible for Christianity and the myth of Jesus.
* In ''[[Literature/TheThrawnTrilogy Dark Force Rising]]'', Leia asks the Noghri matriarch how long ago the planet Honoghr [[ApocalypseHow suffered biosphere destruction]]. The matriarch answers her in Honoghr years, then reiterates it in [[StandardTimeUnits standard years]].

* In Creator/MikhailAkhmanov and Christopher Nicholas Gilmore's ''Literature/CaptainFrenchOrTheQuestForParadise'', the titular character describes the [[SingleBiomePlanet water world]] [[ShoutOut Solaris]] as having a 27-hour day. When humans first settled its sparse islands, they didn't know how to adapt the human 24-hour biological cycle to 27 hours. French congratulates their ingenuity when, instead of trying to alter their genes, they invent... time zones. So, no other planet in this 'verse uses time zones, including Earth? Also, time zones wouldn't really solve the problem of a 27-hour day.[[note]]The time zones apply to different clans rather than longitudes, and a large city can have several clans living in it in its own districts. Thus the same city will operate on different schedules, depending on which district you're in.[[/note]]

* ''Series/BabylonFive'':
** An alien claiming jurisdiction over a planet the station orbits, Epsilon III, says he will give Sinclair "ten of your hours to stand aside." The alien was reading from a phonetic script produced in a hurry; unlike the other aliens, he didn't actually know English at all.
** Cleverly inverted in the episode "By Any Means Necessary", where Sinclair refers to Narn light-years (as Narn years are longer than Earth years). He does this to give G'Kar a loophole that allows him to hold a Narn holy ceremony a few hours later than would normally be allowable.
** Averted when Kosh sets up a meeting at "the hour of scampering".

** At least, unlike minutes, days are based directly on a physical phenomenon, so every planet that's not tidally locked with its primary has a day.
*** On NASA space probe missions, the day on another planet is referred to as a "sol" (partly to distinguish its solar day from its sidereal day, but mostly so that people won't get confused when someone says "three days from now").

* ''VideoGame/{{Spore}}'' completely ignores this; every single race in the entire galaxy seems to use the same measurements of time for no apparent reason.

* ''VideoGame/StarCraft'' has a particularly bizarre one. While it might make some sense that Terrans still refer to Earth years as standard (despite their having spread to planets with a very diverse range of orbital speeds), the fact that the ''Protoss'' do so does not. For example, Fenix (a Protoss) has more than three centuries on Raynor (and the Protoss' ages in the manual are given in years). That or one Aiur year is the same as one on Earth.
--> '''Raynor:''' You sound like a tired old man, Fenix.\\
'''Fenix:''' Do not let the fact that I am [[CoolOldGuy three hundred and sixty-eight years older]] than you dull your impression of me, young Raynor. I can still... how do you Terrans say it... "throw down with the best of them"!

* Averted and parodied in ''Webcomic/SchlockMercenary''. After the Partnership Collective proposes the term "two thousand ''freem''" as the compensation for Schlock killing two attorney drones, the LemonyNarrator explains that two thousand ''freem'' is the amount a Poliforian hypernetter could earn in one Efrickalian week. They then propose suing for twenty thousand kilocreds, which the narrator explains that the Poliforian hypernetter would have to work during the entire festival of Ku'laa to earn even one thousand kilocreds. They then decide to simply kill the heroes by blasting them with a few billion terawatts of plasma. The narrator explains that that amount of energy, [[{{Dissimile}} if it hit the same Poliforian hypernetter]], [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill would disassociate its molecules into a cloud of sub-sub-atomic particles the size of the Lesser Magellanic Cloud]].

* A variant occurs in ''{{WesternAnimation/Futurama}}'', in an episode where Planet Express is hired to transport candy hearts. One of the receiving aliens notices that one heart has spelled love as WUV, "with an Earth W!"

* Averted in ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'', where the Cybertronians typically use their own terms: astro-clicks, cycles and nanocycles, for example. When around humans, at least in ''[[WesternAnimation/TransformersAnimated Animated]]'', they know when to switch to Earth units of measurements like years without adding a "your."
** On the other hand, in Marvel's ''Comicbook/TheTransformers'' comic, Bumblebee described the Cybertronian civil war as having occurred four million years ago "by your way of counting".

* A variant actually happened back before the metric system was adopted as the standard by most countries, when different countries used different weights and measurements which confusingly were called the same names (e. g. "mile", "foot", "inch", "pound" in English, "Meile", "Fuß", "Zoll", "Pfund" in German). It can sometimes be seen today between Imperial and Metric system users, e. g. in common parlance many users of the metric system still use their language's word for "pound" for 500 grams. The differences could be huge, e. g. between what would in German be called an "Englische Meile" (ca. 1.6 km) and a "Deutsche" or "Geographische Meile" (ca. 7.5 km).

* A solar day on Mars (called a "sol") is 24 hours 39 minutes 35.244 seconds long. Therefore, people working with Mars Rovers have to go by a working schedule based on sols, not days – they start work about 40 minutes later every Earth day, and use Martian "hours" and "minutes" that are about 1.0275 times the length of their Earth equivalents. Many people working on the MER project had wristwatches specifically calibrated to Martian time.
* Because interstellar units such as light-years and parsecs are also derived from Earth's orbit around the Sun, it would be necessary to specify whose planetary orbit you are using as the baseline. So an extraterrestrial alien could state, "I come from thirty of your light-years away."
** Not just astronomical measurements (light years, parsecs, etc), but many measurements. The meter, for example, is currently defined as a precise number of units light travels in a second. However, the number of units was chosen so that the distance derived would match the distance obtained from earlier standards, which all boil down to the arbitrary distance decided back when the meter was invented (conceived as a ten-millionth of the distance from the Equator to the North Pole; in practice, a measurement of that distance marked on a physical bar). Meanwhile, the second itself was initially defined as a specific fraction of the earth's orbit around the sun, and the scientific unit used today is simply a precise statement of that measurement in terms that can be checked against an atomic clock.
* In SI Units, (nearly) all the base units were updated to provide a "fundamental" reference (for example, one second is defined in relation the frequency of radiation coming off a specific configuration of an atom, and a meter is defined as the distance light travels in relation to a (fraction) of a second). So those units could be accurately obtained somewhere off Earth. Oddly, kilogram was redefined to remove its direct relation to a universal phenomenon, and it's instead defined as exactly equal to an official kilogram prototype.
** With enough digits of Avogadro's number, we could define the kilogram as a specified number of atoms of a specified isotope. With enough digits of Newton's gravitational constant, we could define the kilogram as the amount of mass that exerts a specified force at a specified distance. Currently only four digits of each are known, not nearly enough to beat the precision of the standard block (which is limited by effects like oxidation).
** The 26th Revision of SI is due to land in 2018. It will be based on several physical constants, including Avogadro's Number, by picking numbers for them (their values in 25th Revision SI units) and declaring them exact, then deriving the units for basic dimensions (including mass) from those.

* Here's another weird one: in ''Literature/ThiefOfTime'', the History Monks have had to rebuild the structure of time after it became fragmented, synchronizing all of history using a unit of duration based on the human pulse rate. Presumably this is because only the monks, themselves, had retained the ability to move and function after this catastrophe, so had to use their own physiology as the basis for timing everything else. Makes sense ... except the human pulse rate ''varies'' all over the place, based on age, physical condition, activity level and mood. So whose pulse, in what mood, and doing what, did they actually choose to base it on? The Literature/{{Discworld}} may be timed on "One of your 'Lu-Tse Taking A Siesta While Feeling A Bit Put Upon By All This' minutes"!

* Creator/IsaacAsimov:
** The short story ''The Last Trump'' revolves around the Devil's apparent triumph over God, having convinced Him/Her/It to bring about Judgement Day on Earth, thus "winning" since humanity as a whole has not yet conformed to the divine plan. However, the angel whose job is to watch over the Earth protests this move and eventually manages to get Judgement Day overturned since God's decree of when the Earth would end referred to a specific date, apparently based on the Gregorian calendar, but the angel points out that nowhere in the decree itself was the specific calendar system identified. Since there are so many different calendar systems in use on Earth, and they cannot just randomly pick one, Judgement Day cannot actually occur and the Earth continues as it always has. The story ends with the Devil, accepting that his immediate plan was foiled, planning a global calendar revision to mark the beginning of the "Atomic Era" for all mankind.
** In the ''Literature/{{Foundation}}'' novels it's noted that the time standard on all inhabited planets is 24 hours although no planet has exactly a 24 hour day. This is due to the original Earther colonists establishing the day as 24 hours, even though by the time of the Foundation Earth is unknown except in legends.
* Here's another weird one: in ''Discworld/ThiefOfTime'', the History Monks have had to rebuild the structure of time after it became fragmented, synchronizing all of history using a unit of duration based on the human pulse rate. Presumably this is because only the monks, themselves, had retained the ability to move and function after this catastrophe, so had to use their own physiology as the basis for timing everything else. Makes sense ... except the human pulse rate ''varies'' all over the place, based on age, physical condition, activity level and mood. So whose pulse, in what mood, and doing what, did they actually choose to base it on? The Literature/{{Discworld}} may be timed on "One of your 'Lu-Tse Taking A Siesta While Feeling A Bit Put Upon By All This' minutes"!

** This is still valid today when speaking of miles, due to the difference between international miles, U.S. statute miles and nautical miles. Not to mention Survey miles and radar miles.

* In Creator/MikhailAkhmanov and Christopher Nicholas Gilmore's ''Literature/CaptainFrenchOrTheQuestForParadise'', the titular character describes the [[SingleBiomePlanet water world]] [[ShoutOut Solaris]] as having a 27-hour day. When humans first settled its sparse islands, they didn't know how to adapt the human 24-hour biological cycle to 27 hours. French congratulates their ingenuity when, instead of trying to alter their genes, they invent... time zones. So, no other planet in this 'verse uses time zones, including Earth? Also, time zones wouldn't really solve the problem of a 27-hour day.

** At another point in the movie, Agent J returns to MiB headquarters and is puzzled why the same staff members are still active, despite it being very late at night. He half-sarcastically asks Zed if anyone ever gets any sleep there, to which Zed explains that they actually operate on Centaurian Time, which has a standard 37-hour day. He assures that J will get used to it after a few months - either that, or have a psychotic breakdown.

* At another point in the movie, Agent J returns to MiB headquarters and is puzzled why the same staff members are still active, despite it being very late at night. He half-sarcastically asks Zed if anyone ever gets any sleep there, to which Zed explains that they actually operate on Centaurian Time, which has a standard 37-hour day. He assures that J will get used to it after a few months - either that, or have a psychotic breakdown.