Why is 1 day 26hrs???

[JRTStarlight]

And I think you mean the 24hour clock still confuses many Americans as adoption of the 24hour clock (to varying degrees) is more widespread outside of the USA.

It may not be unreasonable to assume there are larger % of Americans that are more likely to be ignorant on the matter, but it is unreasonable to assume that's what I meant, or think that's what I meant, let alone say that's what I meant - you think. For all your know, a higher % of American Trek fans are aware of this than the % of non-American Trek fans. We just don't know. Who would even do that study?
Regardless, I just said "some people" and I see no good reason to try to further refine which people, since exactly which demographic is entirely of no consequence to the topic. And it's moderately unTrek-like, too, to attempt to further divide people rather than unite them. Ha ha.

 

[MacLeod]

We've had many debates on differences between countries on here. The 24hr vs 12hr clock is just another one of them.

 

[JRTStarlight]

Honestly, it didn't seem like a debate - just a difference. We have lots of differences, I'm sure. Though I'd have no problem using a 24hr clock and might even prefer it, until digital clocks replace analog clocks everywhere, I'm not sure everyone would appreciate doing the math in their head, however simple it may be to add or subtract 12 to a number for some others. But that's sad, really, like the lost art of making change - unimportant in many people's eyes since the cash registers now tell you exactly how much change they have coming. At least they should still learn to count it back properly. Machines doing our thinking for us? Where will it all end? The UT, that's where. It even makes sense a UT would translate local time to whatever time or language you prefer.
Too bad most depictions of the UT on Trek are not particularly realistic. I wonder how Trek really thinks they work, and how an alien could possibly not see you are using one, apparently even speaking their native language to them. But that, too, is a topic for another thread.

 

[Brian]

I'm just wondering why I'm getting notifications from a thread that died in 2008.

 

[JRTStarlight]

Netflix? For me, I've recently acquired Netflix, and as a result I could rewatch DS9. A Google search about something led me here, and next thing you know it, I replied. Oops (I'm told) - "we" really don't like resurrecting long dormant threads. I don't understand why not, of course. It is not possible to unsubscribe to a particular thread? I dunno. I'm new here and still learning the differences of this message board compared to others, with which I am more familiar. And not having full access to everything for 14 days probably isn't helping.
Anyway, I hope you can unsubscribe to this particular thread if you actually find the notices annoying. Or, if the new conversations might interest you, take part again. Trek is, after all, somewhat timeless in its appeal.

 

[Brian]

I'm all for posting to an existing thread rather than starting a new one. It just seems that whenever it happens in a thread I'm interested in, a mod comes along talking about zombie threads and locks it post haste. Not so for this one, for some reason.

 

[JRTStarlight]

Here, too. Zombie threads, indeed, as if there was some danger of undead contagion. But the MOD here, Savage Dragon, decided the impending danger was not so imminent a threat, I guess, and said he'd leave it open. This time. Maybe because Savage Dragon is more familiar with the dangers of Dragon's Teeth, so he's knows how to deal with undead already, and he's not overly afraid they will get out of hand while he's on the job. He's nice, that way.

 

[Lynx]

rotational period, not orbital, and axis not star

a 26 hour year, now that would make my head spin

It would be more head-spinning if you did live on Venus.
OK, we all know that Venus right now is impossible to live on. But if it were, there would be some strange things to consider.

To quote Wikipedia:
Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. It has the longest rotation period (243 days) of any planet in the Solar System and rotates in the opposite direction to most other planets.

So one day on Venus is actually longer than a Venus year and the sun would go up in the West and down in the East.

Now that's what I really call head-spinning!

Not to mention that the phrase "next day" would have a somewhat different meaning.

(OK that was off-topic, now back to the ongoing discussion)

 

[JRTStarlight]

It's not so far off topic when you consider to make a usable "day" for a planet, it has to have a fast enough rotation so it's at least a smaller unit of time than another obvious and objective one, like the orbital period of any moon it might have, let alone the orbital period about its star. Venus is a weird one, alright. There may be something to be said for dividing up its days into 24 segments (each 10 and 1/8th Earth days long) but many Federation visitors wouldn't easily synch with such a system if they are used to smaller spans of time for their native days, like Terrans, Bajorans, or Vulcans, etc., would be, we assume. Unfortunately, such details are rarely gone into in most Trek stories, so it's wide open speculation. But it's nice to be reminded that real planets, like fictional ones, can and should have wildly different periods of rotations about their axes and might not conform to 24 Earth hours or even something necessarily close to that.

 

[MacLeod]

Here, too. Zombie threads, indeed, as if there was some danger of undead contagion. But the MOD here, Savage Dragon, decided the impending danger was not so imminent a threat, I guess, and said he'd leave it open. This time. Maybe because Savage Dragon is more familiar with the dangers of Dragon's Teeth, so he's knows how to deal with undead already, and he's not overly afraid they will get out of hand while he's on the job. He's nice, that way.

I think there might be more lee-way given to new members who might not be familiar with all the board rules.

Honestly, it didn't seem like a debate - just a difference. We have lots of differences, I'm sure. Though I'd have no problem using a 24hr clock and might even prefer it, until digital clocks replace analog clocks everywhere, I'm not sure everyone would appreciate doing the math in their head, however simple it may be to add or subtract 12 to a number for some others. But that's sad, really, like the lost art of making change - unimportant in many people's eyes since the cash registers now tell you exactly how much change they have coming. At least they should still learn to count it back properly. Machines doing our thinking for us? Where will it all end? The UT, that's where. It even makes sense a UT would translate local time to whatever time or language you prefer.
Too bad most depictions of the UT on Trek are not particularly realistic. I wonder how Trek really thinks they work, and how an alien could possibly not see you are using one, apparently even speaking their native language to them. But that, too, is a topic for another thread.

But with regards to the 12hr vs 24hr clock, once you are familiar with converting from one to another you don't really do the Maths on a conscious level.

 

[JRTStarlight]

Then maybe it's just me. I haven't memorized 13:00 to 24:00 hours such that I know internally just as well what time it is as I would hearing 1 p.m. to 12 a.m., so I still do the math in my head, however simple it may be. Just takes a second, but I still do it. Of course, if I habitually used a 24-hour clock, I suspect that would lessen . . . in time.
It's even worse converting to metric and back. Lazy, stubborn Americans, I guess, but I don't make those National decisions.

 

[MacLeod]

Then maybe it's just me. I haven't memorized 13:00 to 24:00 hours such that I know internally just as well what time it is as I would hearing 1 p.m. to 12 a.m., so I still do the math in my head, however simple it may be. Just takes a second, but I still do it. Of course, if I habitually used a 24-hour clock, I suspect that would lessen . . . in time.
It's even worse converting to metric and back. Lazy, stubborn Americans, I guess, but I don't make those National decisions.

Imperial to Metric and vice versa does require some thought and I was brought up with both systems. But here in the UK we just use a hybrid of the two systems. Many people if asked there height would give you it in feet and inches, ask about the temp and it'll lean more towards celsius. Fuel for vehicles is sold by the litre but we talk about fuel efficeny in MPG. You can still buy a pint in a pub, or buy a pint of milk in a shop (though whilst it might be duel labelled the imperial unit is always given second).

 

[TheSeeker]

I'm all for posting to an existing thread rather than starting a new one. It just seems that whenever it happens in a thread I'm interested in, a mod comes along talking about zombie threads and locks it post haste. Not so for this one, for some reason.

I like to give new members a bit of a break as most are unaware of our rule against resurrecting dead threads. It's also been generating lot of discussion so I decided to leave it open.

 

[JRTStarlight]

I don't really understand the reason for the rule. Is there some sort of administrative headache when an older thread is resurrected? I figure there must be some problem, but I can't imagine what it is, and if anybody said what it was, I missed it. Of course my understanding of why isn't important and I'll comply if that's the rule, but I do wonder about it.

 

[Lynx]

I can understand the rule as such, but sometimes you have to bend the rules a bit in order to get things functioning.

As for planets, the orbital period of Mars is 687 (Earth) days. The solar day on Mars is only slightly longer than an Earth day: 24 hours, 39 minutes which might be almost similar to Bajor. Since bajor is the 11th planet in the system, according to Memory Alpha, it might have an orbital period similar to or possibly longer than Mars. But in that case, the 10 planets closer to the sun must have very fast orbital periods and the sun must be bigger than Earth's sun, considering how it looks from Bajor.

There also seem to be a lot of "weird planets" out there according to some reports of newly discovered Exoplanets

 

[JRTStarlight]

The 10 inner planets might be very, very close to the star, and some may not even be in the same plane, and some may be very small (it's not up to us to define what Bajonans consider a planet, after all). Bajor is pretty unusual inasmuch as it has 5 moons (many Trek "moons" seem to hang on to their atmospheres, so that's a lot of moons, and they much be pretty big). If that many moons don't play an important role in Bajoran time keeping, I'd be surprised.
Anyway, even with 10 inner planets, we can't be sure Bajor is way, way out there such that its orbital period might be 2, 3, 4 or more Earth years long. If anything, their holidays repeat often enough that we see them from television season to television season, making them about a Earth year apart. Thus, Bajor's year is roughly comparable to Earth's year, give or take a small fraction of one Earth year, I'd wager.
Peldor joi

 

[Finn]

I don't really understand the reason for the rule. Is there some sort of administrative headache when an older thread is resurrected? I figure there must be some problem, but I can't imagine what it is, and if anybody said what it was, I missed it. Of course my understanding of why isn't important and I'll comply if that's the rule, but I do wonder about it.

for one thing, they might be a recurring topic. Also, not all participants are still around. Some of them had passed away. Once in a while, I found myself stopping from replying when I see Mallory, Red Ranger or RoJoHen.

 

[JRTStarlight]

In such eventualities, most resurrected threads would likely not continue long after being revived and quickly stop on their own accord due to lack of response. So I just still see no reason to artificially curtail them with a rule. I'm thinking it must be a problem in some hidden way, but I wouldn't know. All I'm saying is, I'm not seeing any apparent reason for it.

 

[Timo]

As regards the 11th planet thing, that's apparently just Memory Alpha weirdness. The one Okudagram that has any sort of onscreen validity shows that Bajor must be one of the planets I through IX from the star, out of XIV total. The Star Charts makes the further assumption that it is VII, although Sisko in "Whispers" nonchalantly refers to "Bajor VII" in his log while one might expect him to just say "Bajor" instead.

DS9 and the Denorios belt on that Okudagram is portrayed as being a bit outward from VIII (which is the only other world in the system to feature in a plotline, namely that of "Past Prologue", and the only other one to be credited with habitation, namely multiple colonies). Also, one of the inner nine worlds is shown having acute orbital tilt and being larger than the others, potentially a gas giant.

The Okudagram as seen in the DS9 Tech Manual p.4:

http://www.lcars.org.uk/lcars_files/LCARS_DS9_Bajor_Sector_Chartography.gif

Note that the planets aren't labeled, except in random number strings; only the comet gets called "Comet Alpha".

"Sons of Mogh" has a further diagram where Klingon minefields surround a system marked with seven dotted and two solid orbital lines. Bajor is inside the rim of minefields in the episode.

https://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.ne...ision/latest?cb=20070312040219&path-prefix=en

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Lynx]

I think that I agree with Star Charts and Sisko here.