How Do You Determine Age?

[hux]

We human beings do it by years based on the Earth going around the sun but clearly this is unique to us (the amount, not the method).

It would be madness, for example, to pretend that Vulcan also takes 365 days to go around its sun. Now, while each planet may have its own system or measurement of years, there is the simple matter of mixed race beings having to determine their age based on one or the other (or do they have two ages).

B'Elanna was half human, half Klingon so how old is she on earth and how old is she on Kronos? Which age does she choose? Does anyone know how long a Klingon year is compared to an Earth year so we can work out her Klingon age?

Is it purely a cultural thing? B'Elanna being more inclined towards her human side and therefore probably measuring her age by Earth measurements.

But what if you have an equal cultural influence from two planetary cultures? What then?

When they say Vulcans live for 200 years, is this based on human measurements? How long do they live by their own measurements? 60 years?

Is this yet another example of the Earth enforcing a human-centric culture on everyone?

 

[JirinPanthosa]

My feeling is, if the universal translator can change the way a person's lips appear to move they can do unit conversion.

 

[Prologic9]

Most of the time we see it from the perspective of Starfleet officers, so it's probably based on their units (which are probably earth's units or close to them.)

Also, in the future, sentiments like "Is this yet another example of the Earth enforcing a human-centric culture on everyone?" just wouldn't be held.

A unit is a unit, it's only offensive if you choose to make it that way.

 

[Nebusj]

My feeling is, if the universal translator can change the way a person's lips appear to move they can do unit conversion.

Arthur C Clarke's novel The Songs Of Distant Earth [1] includes a short chapter in the form of a memorandum. It represents the efforts of one of the scientists on the earth-origin spaceship to explain how to convert between ship time, based on Earth time, and the time of the locals, the outgrowth of a human colony that didn't see much need to stick to a 24-hour day/365-day year given they weren't going to do much with Earth anyway. It concerns only the conversion between one starship and one city's times and is nevertheless dizzyingly complicated and, thus, quite funny to read.

Standards are a complicated and a deeply political matter.


[1] Not the novella version. The novel published around 1985 or so.

 

[Tracy Trek]

Concerning B'Elanna, when she said in the episode Faces that she was five (or was it six) when her father left and then in Lineage she appeared to be 12 when he left. I assumed this meant she was 12 in earth years, but five in either Klingon years. Or perhaps in Kessik years, since they lived on that colony.

 

[MacLeod]

As some others have already pointed out standardisation comes down in some respect to politics. i.e In 1884 the International Meridian Conferrence was held to determine where 0 degrees longitude should be for the purposes of determining time throuought the world.

No doubt the Federation Starfleet has adopted a standard time throuought it's fleet, given it's HQ is on Earth it seems likely that Earth based time is used, and perhaps in part that some parties didin't want to be seen as giving way to former enemies i.e adopting Andorian time onboard Vulcan ships. in DSN the space station appeared to be on Bajoran time which was a 26 hour day.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Yep. Earth years. Human terms. It's silly (and even racist), but that's Star Trek's universe. It's done for simplicity's sake.

I'm more interested in how they measure ages should relativity become an issue - but it doesn't seem to exist in Trek. Time is seemingly constant throughout the Trekverse, with the exception of the "Blink of an Eye" planet.

 

[T'Girl]

We human beings do it by years based on the Earth going around the sun but clearly this is unique to us (the amount, not the method).

The Islamic hijri calendar is 354 days to a year, based on a lunar and not a solar calendar.

I'm more interested in how they measure ages

Cut 'em in half and count the rings?

 

[Zonker]

Wouldn't they just go by stardate?

 

[uniderth]

I did some calculations based on the Pon Farr of Vulcanians. I assumed that since Pon Farr is a cyclical system every "seven years" it is based on the orbit of Vulcanis around its sun. Based on Tuvok's Pon Farr cycle the Vulcanian year came out to about 6.5 earth years. That's close enough for the seven year mark.

 

[hux]

So on Vulcan, the average life-span is considered to be about 30 years? Is that right?

When Kes said Ocampans only lived 9 years, we assumed (as usual) this meant 9 earth years. Maybe Ocampans lived much longer?

 

[uniderth]

What we've seen on screen is that Vulcanians live to about 200 earth years. If Vulcanian years are 6.5 earth years then yes, that would be about 30 Vulcanian years.

 

[Sans]

Units of time, speed and acceleration

• second (symbol s): "duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom"

Other units of time defined by the standard include the minute (1 min = 60 s), the hour (1 h = 60 min) and the day (1 d = 24 h). The year (1 a = 365 d or 366 d) is defined in an informative annex.

Had to throw this out there to help confuse the matter

 

[Forbin]

It did kinda bug me when an alien would use phrases like "decades ago" or "centuries." Centuries of whose years?

It even sounded odd when O'Brien once mentioned doing something "last spring" when he'd been living on a Cardassian space station for several years.

 

[Magellan]

It did kinda bug me when an alien would use phrases like "decades ago" or "centuries." Centuries of whose years?

It even sounded odd when O'Brien once mentioned doing something "last spring" when he'd been living on a Cardassian space station for several years.

He logically must have been referring to Bajoran spring. Hmm, nope that doesn't help. Here on Earth, Christmas is in my summer. Maybe the stations temperature controls simulate seasons?

 

[T'Girl]

IIRC, next Tuesday will be the first day of summer in the southern hemisphere.

 

[Kor]

Perhaps there's a Federation standard year based on an average length of a year on the major Federation planets.

And lots of traditional calendars in many Earth cultures have been lunar instead of solar. Who's to say we will still be using the Gregorian calendar three hundred years from now?

And yes, it is odd that aliens would have concepts of counting years in groups of ten for decades and centuries just like we do. Even in Earth mathematics, there are other number systems besides Base 10.

Kor

 

[FormerLurker]

The reason base 10 is the most common is because of the number of fingers we have. Likewise for other species, especially those on Star Trek, pretty much for the same reason.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

We shouldn't really overthink the fact that time measurements tend to be based on human years with the notable exception of DS9's 26 hour day. This is for simplicity because the show happens to be made for a majority human audience.

We shouldn't even assume other races use the period of revolution of their homeworld as the basic concept for a long period of time. It might be likely for planets less than a couple hundred years off being agrarian since the revolution of the planet dictates the schedule of farmers. But some planets may have negligable tilt and just use Kilodays. Or planets that no longer farm and have weather control may have adopted some other period like trading cycles or magnetic cycles.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Come to think of it, do we have any hard evidence that 1000 stardates is exactly 1 earth year?

All we really know is that it's referred to as a year and seems to be approximately one earth year. But, most species similar to humans probably have a climate somewhat similar to Earth, which means their distance from the sun and thus orbital period is probably in the same ballpark as Earth's. Who's to say it's not some median value of orbital periods of early Federation races and isn't maybe 330 days or 380 days?

Yeah, it seems to match up with 2364, 2365, etc. Most countries skipped around 11 days when they switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar, maybe in 2364 they use a different calendar.