Why is 1 day 26hrs???
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It is based on the orbital period of the planet bajor. it takes Bajor 26 "Earth" hours to rotate around its star. Since space station DS9 is in a near orbit of Bajor, and since the provisional government of Bajor are the actual operators of DS9 (not Starfleet or the UFP) they use the system of timekeeping that is appropriate to their species.
rotational period, not orbital, and axis not star
a 26 hour year, now that would make my head spin
OK so DS9 base their time and day on Bajor, but then how does the federation operate over a vast area with everyone having different times and lengths of days. Surely every planet, stations and ship in the federation should base their time and date on a 24 hour Earth day.
Why on an Earth day and not any other day or time period?
The simple answer: they use stardates. This is probably one of the reasons stardates are useful: it's an artificial system into which, presumably, many of the Federation members had input, and hence it serves all their needs well enough.
Why on an Earth day and not any other day or time period?
The simple answer: they use stardates. This is probably one of the reasons stardates are useful: it's an artificial system into which, presumably, many of the Federation members had input, and hence it serves all their needs well enough.
But i just posted another thread asking how stardates work and the answer i got is no one actually knows how the system works lol even the star date system is not really a good tool for the federation to use.
Well, they do. Witness the fact that the Enterprise and Voyager and the starbases they've visited are all on a standard Earth day.
But Bajor is not in the Federation, and they own Deep Space Nine. They only asked the Federation to help them administrate it.
The stardate system was meant to be initially just a way of representing something other than Earth dates without thought or care given to it. TNG onward went further by adding meaning to it in that one Earth year is equivalent to 1000 points on the stardate scale. This is still very Earth centric and only becomes more efficient in the fact that it's a decimal system. It still probably holds no meaning in relation to other Federation worlds, which is part of the unrealism of Trek.
Why? Why should they base their time and dates on that of Earth instead of, say, Vulcan, or Andor, or Tellar, which were also the founding Members of the Federation? Why should a culture that may have had its calender system for thousands of years have to sacrifice it?
(Besides, Earth's actual physical day is not an even 24 hours. That's why we have leap years.)
It makes a lot more sense just to create the stardate system that every locality can refer to when they need to translate times and dates into something that's applicable Federation-wide.
You're bound to get flak over that, so let's get it over with. Earth's day is exactly 24 hours, because that's how it's defined. It's just that Earth's year isn't exactly 365 days, which gives us leap years.
Of course, nowadays we know that the length of the day varies a bit as Earth wobbles in various ways. The daily wobbling is measured in fractions of seconds at most, but it still theoretically ruins the definition of day=24 hours. Then again, nobody really cares about theory anyway, and the perfectionists use leap seconds now and then to compensate.
There's also variation in the length of the day at different times of the year, because day length is not defined by the time Earth takes to go around its axis once. It's measured from sunrise to sunrise, or noon to noon, or midnight to midnight - which means one has to take into account the full rotation plus the extra degrees Earth must turn to compensate for its movement along its gently curving orbit. And of course that orbit is not a perfect circle, but an ellipse that presents a different requirement for those extra degrees at different times of the year.
But anyway, hours are not an astronomically derived unit as such, but more a unit of convenience that has been decided upon by abstract agreement. In the future, it might well be that it will be decided that each day is exactly 24 hours long, to infinite accuracy, and never mind where the Sun is shining, because that might be the most convenient way to do it. Leap seconds are really annoying, even when only added once a year.
Timo Saloniemi
I recently explained this on a Memory Alpha edit, but they took it down. Apparently it was speculation or some such and MA is NOT about that, however logical the speculation may be, or how well based on known information it is.
But they did, at least once, convert military time to standard time in the DS9 series. Somebody mentioned to Odo something was to occur at 21:00 hours, and told him that was 9:00 p.m, as if he didn't know how to convert. (IIRC, those were the numbers, but don't quote me, and I won't hunt for the episode title, either, but I recently saw it). And Odo replied, he "knew" that, meaning he could convert military time to standard non-military time. This proves they were using a 24-hour clock there and not a 26-hour clock. Otherwise, 21:00 converts to 8:00 p.m. by subtracting 13 hours (half a day) and not 12 hours.
Of course, one may also use a 26-hour clock at times and have two systems of military time. Which one is being used at any given time is likely discernable from context. Any mention of a time past 24:00 to 26:00 would obviously be using a 26-hour clock.
However, I further explained that many (if not all) rotating worlds likely divide their day up into 24 equal parts since 24 has many handy factors, just as they might use a dozen (12) or 360 degrees in a circle, as these are not arbitrary or randomly chosen numbers, but chosen for their many and convenient factors. 24 units, for example, has 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, and 24 as factors. Thus, Bajor has 24 Bajoran hours in a Bajoran day (the time it take Bajor to rotate on its axis once), and one could use military time just as they do on Earth by subtracting (or adding) 12 to convert from one to the other. But as it turns out, 24 Bajoran hours is surprisingly close to 26 Earth hours, whose length may be a Federation standard. Obviously, the locals use both Earth/Federation and Bajoran systems, and military and non-military times, and one knows which by context. Each Bajoran hour is therefore 1.083333 etc. Earth hours long, and there are 24 of those in the time it takes Bajor to rotate once on its axis.
I doubt the universal translators (which are apparently implanted inside their head (they were for the Ferengi, anyway) are an issue, mucking up conversations with extraneously precise conversions between languages, give me a minute translates to give me 1.04567 debars, or whatever Bajorans use in their native language. Numbers are more universal and objective and less subjective than words, and an agreed upon time system is likely in play - though where they are playing at any given moment may determine which system they are using.
I'm pretty confident since 26 is close to 24, humans and other Federation personnel make the adjustments to a 26-hour day cycle to keep in synch with the local population and local time. If the local day is wildly different from 24 standard Earth hours, that may be much harder to do, but an extra 2 hours a day is probably not that hard an adjustment to make - though like jet lag, it can take time to make the adjustment.
But they did, at least once, convert military time to standard time in the DS9 series. Somebody mentioned to Odo something was to occur at 21:00 hours, and told him that was 9:00 p.m, as if he didn't know how to convert. (IIRC, those were the numbers, but don't quote me, and I won't hunt for the episode title, either, but I recently saw it). And Odo replied, he "knew" that, meaning he could convert military time to standard non-military time. This proves they were using a 24-hour clock there and not a 26-hour clock. Otherwise, 21:00 converts to 8:00 p.m. by subtracting 13 hours (half a day) and not 12 hours.
Of course, one may also use a 26-hour clock at times and have two systems of military time. Which one is being used at any given time is likely discernable from context. Any mention of a time past 24:00 to 26:00 would obviously be using a 26-hour clock.
However, I further explained that many (if not all) rotating worlds likely divide their day up into 24 equal parts since 24 has many handy factors, just as they might use a dozen (12) or 360 degrees in a circle, as these are not arbitrary or randomly chosen numbers, but chosen for their many and convenient factors. 24 units, for example, has 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, and 24 as factors. Thus, Bajor has 24 Bajoran hours in a Bajoran day (the time it take Bajor to rotate on its axis once), and one could use military time just as they do on Earth by subtracting (or adding) 12 to convert from one to the other. But as it turns out, 24 Bajoran hours is surprisingly close to 26 Earth hours, whose length may be a Federation standard. Obviously, the locals use both Earth/Federation and Bajoran systems, and military and non-military times, and one knows which by context. Each Bajoran hour is therefore 1.083333 etc. Earth hours long, and there are 24 of those in the time it takes Bajor to rotate once on its axis.
I doubt the universal translators (which are apparently implanted inside their head (they were for the Ferengi, anyway) are an issue, mucking up conversations with extraneously precise conversions between languages, give me a minute translates to give me 1.04567 debars, or whatever Bajorans use in their native language. Numbers are more universal and objective and less subjective than words, and an agreed upon time system is likely in play - though where they are playing at any given moment may determine which system they are using.
I'm pretty confident since 26 is close to 24, humans and other Federation personnel make the adjustments to a 26-hour day cycle to keep in synch with the local population and local time. If the local day is wildly different from 24 standard Earth hours, that may be much harder to do, but an extra 2 hours a day is probably not that hard an adjustment to make - though like jet lag, it can take time to make the adjustment.
While we hear Earth standards being used most of the time, I'm sure Vulcan and Andorian and other planetary standards are often used throughout the Federation, too, depending on who is using them, when and where and why. But like the tedious problems of translating from one language to the another, a universal translator can be programed to make any necessary conversions to the degree of precision one desires. Thus, "1 minute" might not annoyingly translate to "2.45689 gibers," but would round off to something both reasonable and that you would understand, like "2.5 gibers." If you want or need greater precision, you tell the UT to give you greater precision.
Earth may have been the MVP for the creation of the Federation, but even so, I feel confident the locals, wherever you may be, are using their own systems of time and measurements. It might benefit one to learn the local systems if one is spending more than a short span of time there, but otherwise the universal translators will handle most of it for them (and they don't show the tedious process on the screen since that is boring and dull, however more realistic that may be).
Earth may have been the MVP for the creation of the Federation, but even so, I feel confident the locals, wherever you may be, are using their own systems of time and measurements. It might benefit one to learn the local systems if one is spending more than a short span of time there, but otherwise the universal translators will handle most of it for them (and they don't show the tedious process on the screen since that is boring and dull, however more realistic that may be).
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