Line #100 Main/Microts


1	->'''Kryten:''' Hmm yes, he's giving us 5 hanaka to decide.\
2	'''Rimmer:''' How long's a hanaka?\
3	'''Kryten:''' Well, curiously enough, it's exactly the same as one Earth minute.
4	-->-- ''Series/RedDwarf'', "[[Recap/RedDwarfSeasonVIEmohawkPolymorphII Emohawk: Polymorph II]]"
5
6	Fictional universes call for fictional measurements of time. After all, why would an alien culture use the same words for time as an Earth-based culture?
7
8	Strangely, 'alien' time units correlate pretty well with Earth time units in the majority of cases. 'Cycle' is the most common of these, usually referring to a year (though sometimes a day).
9
10	This can be justified easily enough; aliens probably live on a planet that orbits a star and has a day-night cycle, so they might well have natural units of time corresponding to "day" and "year," though probably not exactly the same length (unless, of course, the planet in question is [[AllPlanetsAreEarthlike almost identical to Earth]] and the star it circles is the same as the Sun, in which case it may be the same distance away and would therefore have about the same length for a year. No accounting for days, though.)
11
12	If an alien character doesn't use their own measurements, but instead uses Earth measurements in a jarring manner, they're talking in terms of TwoOfYourEarthMinutes. If these units are used across multiple worlds or civilizations, they are StandardTimeUnits. See also FantasticMeasurementSystem for other fictional units.
13
14	----
15	!!Examples:
16
17	[[foldercontrol]]
18
19	[[folder:Anime and Manga]]
20	* There's an example in the first chapter of ''Manga/{{Barrage}}'': the protagonist is said to be earning 7 [[ArtisticLicensePhysics quarks]] an hour, with a footnote saying a quark is worth about as much as a yen (¥7 ≈ $0.09). That's no doubt meant to tell the readers how poor he is, and presumably that's based on [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchasing_power_parity purchasing power]] as opposed to exchange rate, as the series takes place in a ConstructedWorld.
21	* In ''Anime/DragonBallSuper'', the Grand Priest gives the time until the Tournament of Power and the length of the Tournament itself in fictional units such as takks, explaining that 100 takks equals 48 minutes.
22	[[/folder]]
23
24	[[folder:Comic Books]]
25	* ''ComicBook/{{Superman}}'':
26	** In MediaNotes/{{the Bronze Age\|OfComicBooks}}, comics stated that Kryptonian time was divided into "dendars", their equivalent of a minute that consists of one hundred seconds.
27	** ''ComicBook/TheKryptonChronicles'' included a glossary explaining several Kryptonian terms and words. A "thrib" is "a very short period of time, equivalent to an Earth second". 10,000 thribo (Kryptonese plurals are created by adding an O to the word) make a "wolu" (equivalent to an Earth hour), and ten woluo make one "zetyar" (one Krypton day). A "lorax" is a Kryptonian "month" of 73 days. There were six loraxo in the year of 438 days.
28	** Some months were also named in the stories. In ''ComicBook/TheGreatPhantomPeril'', Superman learned that Faora Hu-Ul was tried and convicted on the 52nd of Belyuth, in the year 10,000.
29	** ''ComicBook/TheLeperFromKrypton'': In planet Knorr, a chronon is a Knorrian hour, about 40 minutes Earth time.
30	** The ''ComicBook/NewKrypton'' story arc has the Kryptonians using a weird time unit, apparently of an order of magnitude similar to the minute.
31	* ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'':
32	** ''ComicBook/TheTransformersMarvel'' 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]]
33	** There are also 'orns', with an 'orn' being 'one Cybertronian lunar day'. Which isn't all that helpful, as we're never told how long that lunar day is.
34	** [[http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Units_of_time That doesn't even begin to do justice to the silliness of Cybertronian units.]]
35	* In ''ComicBook/PaperinikNewAdventures'' we are shown the Evronian time units: the basic unit is the spetung (6[=/=]10 of a second), then we have the secron (10 spetungs[=/=]6 seconds), the minutron (100 secrons[=/=]10 minutes), the houron (24 minutrons[=/=]4 hours), the dayron (12 hourons, 18 in the rink (final dayron in all monthrons but those of Tamit and Hoxon), equivalent to either 2 or 3 days), the monthron (15 dayrons organized in groups of 5, it's 30 or 31 Earth days 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 few girls in your neighbourhood"), a joking answer the staff tended to give to particularly strange fan mails.
36	* The aliens in the French-Belgian comic ''ComicBook/TheScrameustache'' uses "time units" on a few occasions. Their duration is never precisely stated, but it seems to be around a minute.
37	* ''ComicBook/LegendsOfTheDeadEarth'':
38	** In ''ComicBook/Robin1993'' Annual #5, time aboard the GenerationShip Gotham is measured in cycles. One cycle is roughly equal to a year.
39	** In ''Franchise/WonderWoman'' Annual #5, the Unremembered measure time in cycles. 18 years in the Old Earth calendar equates to 70 cycles.
40	* ''ComicBook/StarTrekEarlyVoyages'': In "The Fallen, Part Two", the Chakuun measure time in cycles, which seem to be equivalent to standard years.
41	[[/folder]]
42
43	[[folder:Fan Works]]
44	* The time system in Ketafa in ''Fanfic/WithStringsAttached'' (and, later, also in Baravada in ''Fanfic/TheKeysStandAlone: The Soft World'') is some strange thing divided into five big chunks, four sets of five smaller chunks, and 400 smaller units. Times are called, very prosaically, “2-3” or “5-5” or whatever. The four never bother to find out anything about it, and the only time it matters to them is in ''Keys'' when they need to be somewhere at a particular time, or when one of the minor magic items they acquire has a time limit. They do, however, get a pocket watch.
45	** The clock starts at noon, when all hands are at 1; this is called “All Up,” signals lunch, and is the only known Ketafan clock setting to correspond with any 24-hour clock setting.
46	** No calendar, day names, etc. are mentioned at any time, but the inhabitants on both continents refer to “hands” of days or years.
47	* In ''Fanfic/KyonBigDamnHero'', Kuyou Suou measures time in terms of number of rotations of a black hole rotating at approximately maximum speed, which is about 1,150 per second.
48	* In ''Fanfic/Plan7Of9FromOuterSpace'' 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]].
49	* ''Fanfic/PokemonResetBloodlines'' has this come up with one of the show's longest running mysteries: Ash's age. In fic, ''Ash'' himself has no idea how long his journey pre time travel was as per one of the stories ongoing jokes, so he eventually starts to measure the length of time he was traveling in gym battles.
50	* ''Fanfic/WarriorsRedux'' revamps the system of time used in the ''Warriors'' series. Cats judge time by the position of the sun and moon. They also have their own names for the seasons. To be more specific:
51	-->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".\
52	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.\
53	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.
54	[[/folder]]
55
56	[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]
57	* ''Film/MenInBlack'' uses this trope in a grimly comedic way, tossing 'week' in where it really shouldn't go...
58	-->'''Kay:''' Arquillian battle rules, kid: first we get an ultimatum, then a warning shot, then we have a galactic standard week to respond.\
59	'''Jay:''' A "galactic standard week?" How the hell long is that?\
60	'''Zed:''' One hour.
61	* ''Film/{{Coneheads}}'': Seven Remulakian zerls correspond to approximately sixteen earth years. Beldar and Prymat are understandably worried when the home planet said it would take that long for a rescue ship to arrive.
62	* In ''Film/ManOfSteel'', Zod and his followers are sentenced to the Phantom Zone for three hundred "cycles". These are presumably Kryptonian years, but since no matter how much time they measure, Krypton [[DoomedHometown doesn't have three hundred of them left]], it quickly become a moot point.
63	[[/folder]]
64
65	[[folder:Literature]]
66	* Inverted in ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'', which uses a ten-day "week". {{Downplayed\|Trope}} since this is mentioned exactly once outside [[AllThereInTheManual the glossary]]; most of the viewpoint characters are from rural areas that don't usually keep track of anything more precise than the seasons and don't even know the names of the days. One character who refers to "a week or ten days" is assumed to mean "a week, [[YouAreTheTranslatedForeignWord i.e.: ten days]]".
67	* In Steven Brust's ''Literature/{{Dragaera}}'' novels, a Dragaeran week is 5 days. Humans/Easterners still use seven-day weeks, and even fortnights (14 days), which Vlad (raised in Dragaera) thinks is a really weird period of time to have a name for because it is "...one day shorter than three weeks."
68	* Most of Creator/LEModesittJr's novels, [[SameStoryDifferentNames even those in entirely different settings]], have "eightdays" instead of weeks and use "kays" for distance.
69	* Creator/EdgarRiceBurroughs' ''Literature/JohnCarterOfMars'' stories. Martian civilization used the following time units: 1 Xat = 200 tals, 50 xats = 1 zode, and 10 zodes = 1 Martian day. Mars has a day almost identical to Earth (24 hours 39.6 minutes), so 1 zode = 2 hours 28 minutes, 1 xat = 3 minutes and 1 tal = .9 second.
70	* ''Literature/{{Gor}}'' (based a lot on Barsoom) measures 80 Ihn (seconds) to the Ehn, 40 Ehn (minutes) to the Ahn, and 20 Ahn (hours) to the day.
71	* Creator/MercedesLackey's ''Literature/HeraldsOfValdemar'' books call an hour a "candlemark".
72	** The whole "candlemark" thing comes from [[TruthInTelevision a real-word form of clock from the medieval period]], which was simply a candle made in a length which would (theoretically) take X hours to burn down. The candle was striped in hour-long segments, so you could tell by looking at it how long it had been since you lit it. Obviously there was much potential for imprecision in the real world; in Valdemar they've got it down to a bit more of a science.
73	** Valdemar's neighboring countries use other units called "[something]marks" or just plain "marks." They're all on the same order of magnitude, but no two of the same length, leading to some in-universe confusion.
74	* In the ''[[Literature/TheObsidianTrilogy Obsidian Trilogy]]'', characters from a certain city reckon time in units of "bells", each of which is two hours. The city is chock-full of bell towers that all ring on that interval in a complicated schedule. Time is further divided into the shorter 'chimes', which eventually are shown to be about fifteen minutes.
75	* The Race in Creator/HarryTurtledove's ''Literature/{{Worldwar}}'' series apparently operates on metric time, as their phrase "one tenth of a daytenth" equals out to about fifteen minutes.
76	* The giant, moving [[BaseOnWheels city on rails]] in ''Literature/TheInvertedWorld'' uses "miles" as a measure of time. Though initially confusing, this is eventually explained when it is revealed that the City has to move 1/10 of a mile per day in order to survive; thus, a character might say "a mile ago" to mean "ten days ago."
77	* Creator/IsaacAsimov:
78	** Deliberately [[AvertedTrope averted]] in ''Literature/Nightfall1990'', co-written with Creator/RobertSilverberg; The authors say this is to simplify the narrative, because using alien words might break the reader's WillingSuspensionOfDisbelief. So the narrative uses words like "mile" "hour" and so forth. They do specifically say there may not be 60 minutes in an hour.
79	** In the ''Robot City'' series (by Rob Chilson, William F. Wu, Arthur Byron Cover, Michael P. Kube-[=McDowell=] and Mike [=McQuay=]) the robots use normal time units, but since the days in the titular city are of a different length, the human heroes get metric watches dividing the day into decades and centades.
80	* Often used in the ''Literature/StarTrekNovelVerse''.
81	** 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.
82	** The novels 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.
83	** The Aluwnans in ''[[Literature/StarTrekTheGenesisWave Genesis Force]]'' use the rather uninspired "instants" and "units" in place of minutes and hours.
84	* At one point in the ''Literature/{{Dragonback}}'' series, Alison Kayna notices that the [[ScaryDogmaticAliens Valahguan]] "[[OneHitKill Death]]" weapons the scout fleet gets hit with cut off after three minutes and 47 seconds, which led her (correctly) to the conclusion that the weapons were strictly a loaner and that the enemy alliance wasn't that firm. [[OurDragonsAreDifferent Draycos]] mentions that that would fit, since 3 minutes 47 seconds works out to two ''birs'' of Valahguan time measurement.
85	* A "week" on Literature/{{Discworld}} is eight days long. This could, potentially, have caused difficulties with the ''Discworld Diaries'' line of humorous datebooks, but the quandry was resolved by saving Octeday for amusing anecdotes and character sketches.
86	** 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 seasons 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.
87	* In Creator/JoanVinge's ''Literature/TheOutcastsOfHeavenBelt,'' all time units have been replaced by multiples of seconds (megaseconds,gigaseconds), freeing them from dependence on any local rotation or revolution cycles.
88	* In the Literature/{{Darkover}} books, a Darkover day is twenty-eight hours. Why twenty-eight? Presumably (in the author's attempt to retcon this), the original LostColony approximated the Earth hour (before they forgot their origin), but adjusted to a new day length.
89	* In ''Literature/JourneyToTheMorningStar'', the [[HumanALiens Etherians]] measure time in tils, tiltils, soltans, and ladoses. A til is a hair longer than a second. A tiltil is a hundred tils. A soltan is a hundred tiltils. A lados (Etherian day) is eighteen soltans. It's not specified what they call a year, although they also measure orbital cycles, and one full orbit of [[AllPlanetsAreEarthlike Etheri Tau]] around Lado is equal to 422 ladoses.
90	* In ''Literature/WizBiz'' series the World measures time in "day-tenths" which is 1/10th between today's sunrise and sunset. Yes, their length varies as the day length changes. Interestingly, the time in Wizard's Keep seems to be in synch with California -- "two day-tenths from sunrise" is the same in both places.
91	* Creator/ErinHunter:
92	** Cats in ''Literature/WarriorCats'' refer to the seasons as Newleaf, Greenleaf, Leaf-fall, and Leaf-bare. They also don't use years like humans. They go by moons. One moon is roughly a month, a half-moon refers to two weeks, and a quarter-moon refers to a week.
93	** Dogs and wolves in ''Literature/SurvivorDogs'' refer to the seasons as Tree Flower, Long Light, Red Leaf, and Ice Wind. Morning is "sunup" while the night is referred to as "no-sun". Canines measure time in moons, with one month being "one full journey of the [[AnthropomorphicPersonification Moon-Dog]]", while smaller units such as a day would be "one Sun-Dog journey".
94	** Bears in ''Literature/SeekerBears'' have the same moon/month idea as ''Warrior Cats'', but they use different terms for the seasons depending on the species. Polar bears have Snow-Sky, Snow-Melt, and Burn-Sky. Black bears and grizzly bears may share Cold-Earth, Fish-Leap, and Leaf-Time.
95	* Rabbits in ''Literature/WatershipDown'' don't have a clear sense of time. They only have approximations. "[[ConLang Fu Inle]]" [[TranslationConvention translates]] to "after moonrise".
96	* In ''Literature/ArrivalsFromTheDark'', the [[SpaceElves Lo'ona Aeo]] use "eightdays" as their version of weeks, and their human mercenaries have to adapt to that. It's not clear if the length depends on which planet one is on, especially since the Lo'ona Aeo themselves have been a SpacePeople for millennia (although their space habitats generally orbit one of their now-deserted central worlds).
97	* In ''Literature/TailchasersSong'' cats have their own way of telling time. Instead of evening, morning, afternoon, etc they have different Hours. "(Hour of) Stretching Sun", "(Hour of) Unfolding Dark", "(Hour of) Deepest Quiet", "(Hour of) Final Dancing", etc. Summer is referred to "Hour of the Smaller Shadows", but other seasons aren't named. A month is an "Eye" (as in Meercat Allmother's, their {{God}}'s, eye). The moon cycles are referred to as the eye "shutting" and "opening", thus "tomorrow night" is instead "eye-next".
98	* ''Literature/TheMurderbotDiaries'' uses "cycles" in place of "days"; {{Justified\|Trope}} since timekeeping needs to be standardized across planets with different rotational periods, {{Space Station}}s, and ships in interstellar transit. {{Discussed\|Trope}} when some people caught in a 20-year LeonineContract realize they don't know what standard of "year" the contract uses and have an OhCrap moment.
99	* ''Literature/{{Diaspora}}'' uses the "tau" as the standard unit of time in [[TheMetaverse virtual-reality Polises]]. Distinct in that the Polises' relative perception of time is determined by the processing power they run on; the [[TimeDilation tau-to-second ratio]] has grown hugely over the years, so when some characters temporarily sync with robotic bodies to parlay with humans, they're pained to know that time is passing 800 times faster "back home".
100	* In ''Literature/NecessaryEvil'', a character has to summon help from the [[EldritchAbomination alien Eidolons]], and asks them to gauge the time by 7000 human heartbeats.
101	* ''Literature/TheDispossessed'' has "decads", which are ten-day weeks.
102	* The Three Galaxies from ''Literature/HaveSpaceSuitWillTravel'' use radioactive half-lives measured in base-twelve for timekeeping.
103	[[/folder]]
104
105	[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
106	* {{Trope Namer\|s}} ''Series/{{Farscape}}'''s alien characters commonly use 'microt', 'arn' and 'cycle' in place of 'second', 'hour' and 'year' (roughly). John Crichton (the only Earth character in the series) picks up on it, and often counters with nonsense of his own. They also use "solar days" (a real world NASA term to describe a planet's local rotation) even in situations where there isn't a planet to refer to. Some of that may be handwaved by Crichton having TranslatorMicrobes.
107	* ''Series/BattlestarGalactica1978'' uses "microns" for seconds, "centons" for minutes (or for hours in the series pilot), "centars" for hours, "sectons" for weeks, and "yahrens" for years.
108	** "Yahren" is pronounced ''exactly'' like the German ''Jahren'', the dative form of the word ''Jahre'' meaning "years". In fact, the plural of "yahren" in old BSG was "yahren". So yes, BSG did just rip off German.
109	** In real life, "micron" is slang for micrometre, is one-thousandth of a millimetre, but that would mean that when the Cylon raiders were "ninety microns and closing," they were 0.09 mm away. But seriously, folks, the Viper coordinator probably meant the raiders would arrive in 90 seconds on their present course and speed.
110	** The show hung a Lampshade on it in the episode ''Greetings From Earth'' where other human space colonists used seconds, minutes, and hours while Apollo said "Wait just a centon!" trying to figure it out.
111	** Helpfully [[TwoofYourEarthMinutes translated for us]] by an Earth-analog native in "Experiment In Terra," when Starbuck tells her he'll be back in a "centar":
112	--->'''Brenda:''' Whatever that is, I hope it's less than an hour.
113	* ''Series/BattlestarGalactica2003'' averts this, except for some documents visible onscreen in Armistice Station in the miniseries, which use original-series terminology. Spoken dialogue and other writings have "years", "minutes", etc.
114	* ''Series/DoctorWho'':
115	** Daleks use "rels" to indicate a short period of time, which varies between about one and two seconds from one episode to another.
116	** Time Lords in the ExpandedUniverse measure time in spans and microspans.
117	* In ''Series/BabylonFive'', Drazi cycle not Drazi week. Cycle Drazi ''year''. It can be assumed that almost all species have their own time units, but the Babylon station runs on Earth time. Some early episodes referred to on-station time in terms of "cycles" (the writers never quite agreed how long a cycle was; the Drazi example was meant as a joke about that), but this was dropped in favor of standard Earth time units.
118	* ''Series/RedDwarf'': The Kinitawowi are shown to use hanaka as form of time measurement in "[[Recap/RedDwarfSeasonVIEmohawkPolymorphII Emohawk: Polymorph II]]". Kryten says a hanaka is exactly the same as a minute, which somehow leads the Cat to calculate that five hanaka is twenty-eight hours.
119	* ''Franchise/StarTrek'':
120	** ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'':
121	*** Beginning with this series, 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.
122	*** In one episode, the Klingons use "turns" to describe years.
123	** ''Series/StarTrekVoyager''
124	*** The planet in "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS1E3TimeAndAgain Time and Again]]" used rotations, intervals, and fractions. And Hindu-Arabic numerals.
125	*** Averted in "[[Recap/StarTrekVoyagerS1E9PrimeFactors 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.
126	*** A recently de-[[HiveMind assimilated]] Seven Of Nine once [[NoSocialSkills attempts to participate in a conversation]] regarding children by remarking that "[[WouldHurtAChild Children]] assimilated by the Borg are placed in maturation chambers for seven cycles". [[EpicFail That goes over about as well as could be expected]]. The exact length of the "cycles" she mentions is not stated, and considering the nature of the Borg, could be anywhere from seconds to years (though probably closer to the latter).
127	* Parodied in the ''Series/StargateSG1'' episode "[[Recap/StargateSG1S5E12WormholeXTreme Wormhole X-Treme!]]" when one of the characters in the ShowWithinAShow uses 'bleems' as a measurement of time comparable to years. This was quite likely a subtle case of good-humored ribbing via ActorAllusion, since by this point, Ben Browder and Claudia Black, the former lead stars of the {{Trope Namer\|s}} ''Series/{{Farscape}}'', had joined ''Stargate SG-1'' as regular cast members.
128	[[/folder]]
129
130	[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
131	* ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}'' has a year... that's made up of 15 months and 5 days that are "outside the year", called Calibration. Also, every month is made of exactly 28 days.
132	** [[TruthInTelevision Some calendar systems actually do have "extra days" that are considered outside the normal months or year]]. Depending on the culture, they may be considered especially lucky or unlucky.
133	* The ''TabletopGame/ForgottenRealms'' has the "[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin tenday]]", which some nations call a "ride." Hilarity sometimes ensues due to confusion, when a person says "two rides" and listeners think they mean two days of riding.
134	* ''TabletopGame/{{Paranoia}}'' supplement ''Acute Paranoia''. Alpha Complex used the phrase "half a cycle" for the period between 1 wake-up call and the next (i.e. 1 day). A "cycle" was therefore 2 days.
135	* In the old ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' setting "Hollow World," where the setting lacked a day-night cycle, the basic unit of time was the "march."
136	* The [[http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Imperial_Dating_System Imperial Dating System]] of ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'' records dates in the format of check number, year fraction, year, millennium (e.g. 0123456.M41). The check number refers to how far removed the recorded event is from Terra (0 being on Terra, 9 being in the Warp and therefore chronologically unreliable). The year fraction refers to when in the year the event occurred in a system divided into one thousand units; each increment corresponds to roughly eight hours and forty-five minutes. The year and millennium are straightforward. The example works out to "This event happened on Terra in the 123rd increment of the 456th year of the 41st millennium."
137	[[/folder]]
138
139	[[folder:Video Games]]
140	* ''VideoGame/BugFables'' has "moons", which equate to months, according to WordOfGod.
141	* The ''VideoGame/{{X}}-Universe'' series has the "sezura", "mizura", "tezura", "wozura", "mazura" and "jazura", developed by the local LizardFolk Teladi. None of them directly correspond to Earth time units. 1 sezura = 1.7 seconds, 1 mizura = 96 sezuras (2 min, 43 sec), and continuing into ever more irregular measurements. ''X2: The Threat'' dropped the alternate measurements; the games still use the alternate names, but they correspond directly with standard time measurements, like one mizura being one minute. ''X3: Terran Conflict'' switches to standard Earth time units, coincidentally as Earth is [[LostColony reconnected]] to the rest of the universe.
142	* The Slylandro in ''VideoGame/StarControlII'' have "rotation," "Drahnasa," and "Drahn" which are something like their equivalent of days, years, and millennia (not particularly similar in duration to ours though). It would be tricky to decode these except that pretty much everything interesting that's happened on a galactic scale happens in one of three time periods (Quite Recently, A Long Time Ago and A Really, Really Long Time Ago) so luckily it's not too hard to figure out what they're on about.
143	** To be more precise, one "rotation" is one "day" of their planet, 1 Drahn is equal to 4 million rotations and one Drahn is divided into two thousand Drahnasa. [[http://uqm.stack.nl/forum/index.php?topic=1169.0 Some code examination]] reveals that the rotation of the Slylandro homeplanet is 14.2 earth hours which tells us that one Drahnasa is equal to 1180 earth days (a little over 3 years) and one Drahn is 2370000 earth days (roughly 6500 years).
144	* The people of the ''Franchise/{{Metroid}}'' universe use "cycles" for a span of time somewhere between a few months and about a year. Space Pirate logs often talk about projects being developed over the course of a few cycles, for example figuring out how to infuse their troops with Phazon in ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime'', especially as it took multiple failed attempts. U'mos in ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime2Echoes'' is mentioned to be several centicycles old (technically it should be centocycles, but that's [[UnitConfusion a different trope entirely]]). Might it be some based on other planet's year? By the time of ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime3Corruption'', however, references to cycles have been replaced by references to mundane years and months.
145	* In ''VideoGame/{{Iji}}'', The Tasen and Komato use "cycles", "pulsecycles", and "starturns", although how they correspond to human units of time is unknown. Starturns would presumably be a Komato year, but since we don't know how long it takes their planet to orbit, it doesn't help much.
146	** According to WordOfGod, a Starturn equals a year (how long it takes Origin [[spoiler:(i.e. [[EarthAllAlong Earth]])]] to make a full orbit around its star), a Longturn equals a month (but it's unknown how many make up a Starturn), a Turn a day (how long it takes Origin to make one rotation around its axis), a Cycle an hour (unknown how many make up a Turn), a Shortcycle a minute (unknown how many make up a Cycle), and a pulsecycle a second (whatever the Komato pulse was when they came up with it).
147	* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' measures hours as "bells" and months as "moons". The calendar used in Eorzea is analogous with the Gregorian calendar, being comprised of twelve months with approximately thirty days each (give or take an extra day in some months), with individual months being labeled as alternating "Astral Moons" and "Umbral Moons", and days within those months as "Suns". To name a couple of examples: the Eorzean equivalent of January 16 would be called the "16th Sun of the 1st Astral Moon", while April 7 would be the "7th Sun of the Second Umbral Moon".
148	* ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarOnline'' has an interesting example that also serves as GameplayAndStoryIntegration in the form of the Swatch corporation's "[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time Internet Time]]", a universal measurement of time that applied across the entire world (and the game's servers) which, in theory, eliminates the concept of time zones by applying the current time in Internet Time everywhere, in the service of facilitating better communications among the game's international playerbase. There are 1000 ".beats" per day in Internet Time, which comes out to one minute and 26.4 seconds of real time per .beat. Based on that, a "second" in Internet time is approximately a hundredth of a .beat, a "minute" coming to seven tenths of a .beat, and an "hour", 41.666 .beats. When applied to a clock, noon would be consider [=@500 .beats=], and midnight, [=@000 .beats=].
149	* The ''VideoGame/{{Homeworld}}'' series is a bit inconsistent about this, using a fictitious unit of measurement called a "klom" interchangeably with "kilometre" on at least one occasion without making it clear from context whether the former is slang for the latter or an exception to the TranslationConvention. Conflicting reports on the canonical size of in-game units doesn't help clear this up.
150	* In ''VideoGame/TheFeebleFiles'', the game's characters frequently use "cycle" and "click" when referring to various amounts of time. It's never made clear what ''exactly'' is the amount of time these two are supposed to represent.
151	* 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/RatchetAndClankFutureToolsOfDestruction'' is a "3 3/4 centicubit hexagonal washer."
152	* A careful look at the clocks in ''VideoGame/{{Stray\|2022}}'' shows that they have sixteen hours instead of the usual twelve. Which makes sense for a civilization of robots as 16 = 2[[superscript:4]] or 10000 in binary.
153	[[/folder]]
154
155	[[folder:Webcomics]]
156	* In ''Webcomic/TheInexplicableAdventuresOfBob,'' the dragons and Nemesites measure time in "zarps." Since "half a zarp" seems to equal at least a short night's sleep, we can guess a full zarp is probably something between 12 and 16 hours. An author's comment when they first appear compares them to [[Franchise/{{Transformers}} astroseconds,]] [[Series/BattlestarGalactica1978 centons,]] and [[Series/DoctorWho rels.]]
157	* The trolls in ''Webcomic/{{Homestuck}}'' call years "sweeps", although the Alternian year is equal to around 2.16 Earth years.
158	* In ''Webcomic/EscapeFromTerra'' most Belters use a decimalized calendar and time-keeping system designed by the Mars colonists. Particularly "centimes" (about 14.8 minutes) and "decadays" (10 Martian days).
159	* In ''Webcomic/LastRes0rt'' the galaxy has apparently adopted [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time Swatch Internet Time]]
160	* 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' (which probably equate to individual panels and entire story arcs).
161	* TheGreys in ''Webcomic/GeneralProtectionFault'' measure time in "gandans". These are [[https://www.gpf-comics.com/archive.php?d=19990319 first mentioned]] when Pi says he and Planck will be "tortured for a thousand 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.
162	[[/folder]]
163
164	[[folder:Western Animation]]
165	* ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'':
166	** In ''[[WesternAnimation/BeastWars Beast Wars: Transformers]]'', 'cycles' are used for minute-like timespans. There are also "nano-kliks" (roughly a second), "decacycles," "megacycles," and "stellar cycles," which varied DependingOnTheWriter (megacycles at one point going from roughly an hour to, from context, roughly a year).
167	** ''WesternAnimation/TransformersAnimated'' uses this so much you really wish they'd just break down and convert the damn units. "Wait a cycle!" "I haven't done this in deca-cycles!" "I have bided my time for eighty mega-cycles..."
168	** The original ''WesternAnimation/TheTransformers'' series had the infamous "astroseconds," "astrominutes," "astrolitres," "a Cybertronic mili-inch," etc. The first episode mentioned a unit of time called a "quartex," but it was never mentioned again.
169	* In ''[[WesternAnimation/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles2003 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]]'', Donatello calculates a ratio of 1 Triceraton trigon to 10 minutes.
170	* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Reboot}}'', the characters said things like "In a nano" or "Gimme a nano." Nano as nanosecond. The characters living in a computer, [[JustifiedTrope this actually makes sense]].
171	* ''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. The obvious guess, that it's simply a pony-ism for "month" due to how its used and the association with lunar cycles, immediately falls apart when recalling that in this setting, the moon is controlled manually, and every ''other'' unit of time is unchanged. [[WordOfGod The show's director eventually clarified]] that "it's a unit of time with no human equivalent," which fits its tendency to be used when the writers don't want to worry too much about the timeline. To give a few examples:
172	** The Apple Family Reunion is held "every 100 moons".
173	** The Crystal Mirror to the human world in the ''Equestria Girls'' spinoff opens once "every thirty moons" for three days. Twilight later uses an invention to open the mirror manually so they can go through whenever they want.
174	** In the GrandFinale, Twilight establishes the Council of Friendship between herself and her friends when she moves back to Canterlot to become the new ruler of Equestria, which meets up "once a moon".
175	* In ''WesternAnimation/VoltronLegendaryDefender'', Alteans measure time in "ticks", which a prolonged gag has the team eventually deduce are ''slightly'' longer than seconds. The second season expands on this: A decafeeb is somewhere between a years and a decade, a quintant is roughly a day, a varga seems to be about an hour, and dobashes are more or less a minute. After a while, the Paladins manage to pick up on it.
176	[[/folder]]
177
178	[[folder:Real Life]]
179	* Historically, attempts to replace seven-day weeks with something else have failed. This has been attributed to, of all things, bearded men preferring to trim their facial hair on the same day each week: wait longer than seven days and it grows enough to get tangled; don't wait as long, and they're grooming themselves before there's much need to do so.
180	** The Metric calendar failed in part because pretty much everyone (this was revolution-era [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar France]]) still had to use the old calendar to track the Sundays. A calendar change also causes problems for holidays like Easter, the date of which is based on the interface between a seven-day week and the lunar cycle and moves every year. [[note]]This was intentional, trying to undermine the power of the church.[[/note]]
181	* When NASA scientists are talking in terms of subjective time on another planet, they use "sols" to cover a single rotation[[note]]technically, a single ''solar day'', the amount of time it takes the planet to rotate so that the sun comes back to the same position in the sky[[/note]] of the planet, to keep the Earth measurements lined up with the clock. The Martian sol is 2.7% longer than an Earth day, so the difference is about 40 minutes a day. This can really add up over the months and years. Since all on-site equipment is solar powered, all scheduling is done according to the length of sols, and some team members have Martian time watches. Some particularly dedicated researchers end up having rather peculiar sleep schedules by Earth standards.
182	* In 1969 the Swiss company Helbros brought out a "lunar watch" for the use of astronauts, which divides the lunation into 30 "lunes" of 24 "lunours". (Centilunours and decilunours for shorter periods.)
183	* Various forms of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time decimal divisions of the day.]]
184	* Website/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".
185	** An in-joke in the Arch Linux community are [[https://web.archive.org/web/20121130111343/https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Kiloseconds kiloseconds.]]
186	** Combining the above, note that a "millifortnight" comes out to 1,209.6 seconds, i.e., very close to 20 minutes, or a third of an hour.
187	* The stereotype of Native Americans using the phrase "many moons ago", or similar, comes from some of them using a lunar calendar rather than a solar or lunisolar one ("moon" meaning "actual lunar month" as opposed to the abstraction called a "month" on a lunisolar calendar). Other cultures primarily speak in terms of seasons; Navajos, for example, are religiously forbidden to discuss certain religious subjects or do certain tasks (like weaving) except in winter, "the Season when Thunder Sleeps". Some cultures may have eight or six seasons instead of four, depending on the local climate or what the calendar is designed around (hunter-gatherers, for instance, may find the breeding seasons of deer more important than the planting seasons for grains).
188	* 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 billionth. Or maybe named the unit after Bill Gates. And misspelled it.
189	* 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 minutes? I don't have the patience to sit through half an hour of this!"]]
190	[[/folder]]

Context Main / Microts