Time Decimalisation
SlabTime was decimalised at the exact moment it left orbit (see PD), there being no further reason to link personal sleep/wake cycles to what was already an inappropriately enforced day/night routine back on Earth.
History
Circadian rhythm related sleep disorders had been growing at an alarming rate since the mid 20th century[1]. By the end of the 21st Century more than 50% of worldwide workers had 'night jobs' and were heartily fed up with not being able to talk to their banks and having to drag themselves out of their beds at bloody nine AM to take deliveries from chirpy delivery guys who had already been up since dawn and had a special 'look' for those who clearly weren't hyperactive 'morning people'. Experimenters had discovered, as far back as the 1980's, that when deprived of any clues as to the day/night cycle, many people quickly settled into an approximate 27 hour rhythm. Many lower order mammals displayed remarkable natural resonance with the 27 hour cycle[2] right down to the level of cell-cultured neurons confined to a Petri Dish. There was even talk of an 'after hours gene'.[3]
Clearly, something was wrong. Typical sayings, quotations and common phrases indicated the popular knowledge of the day;
- I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired
- There are not enough hours in the day
- I'm more of a Night Owl really
Like all common knowledge, it came under IRAKi scrutiny. Time Decimalisation was tested by the company for a few weeks during 2068 but after almost two months, none of their employees had any idea who was coming or going or when they could or couldn't hold any meetings. Although Milus Blondel considered this a perfect arrangement, the board revolted and the whole scheme was dropped.
Explanatory Theories
There are two main hypotheses for the 27 hour cycle;
- The Earth has encountered several catastrophic meteor events during its history and it is possible that these impacts may have had the effect of increasing the angular velocity of the planet and thereby shortening the day. However for this circadian rhythm to still be part of our genetic memory, would require underlying human behavioural patterns to remain unchanged for more than 250 million years. [4]
- The human consciousness energy comes from a planet with a 27 hour day/night cycle.[5]
Base units
The SI unit of time is the second (s). By the time (sic) Slab left Earth it was far too complicated to alter this, so Slab seconds and Earth seconds are the same[6]. Changing this would have meant such an unbelievable amount of messing around with equations that the physicists were prepared to boycott Slab unless the SI second was adopted. And we had to have the physicists - we love you guys - honest.
Structure
SlabTime (sometimes referred to as deciTime[7]) is based on 100 seconds to the minute, 100 minutes to the hour, 10 hours to the day and 100 days to a cycle as follows;
Unit | Slab (seconds) | Earth (seconds) |
---|---|---|
second | 1 | 1 |
minute | 100 | 60 |
hour[8] | 10,000 | 3,600 |
day | 100,000 | 86,400 |
This makes the SlabDay 15.74% longer than an EarthDay or almost 27 EarthHours and 47 EarthMinutes long.
By convention, SlabTime syntax is CYCLE:DAY:HOUR:MINUTE:SECOND with leading zeros where necessary eg; 1039:97:4:72:98 which can also be written as 10,399,747,298 for calculation purposes, being the exact number of seconds PD.
Controversy
While there are many well documented, scientifically sound reasons for the length of the SlabDay, it has been frequently pointed out that the extra hours were all added during the evening which greatly benefited those who had been lobbying for longer prime time slots on Earth for decades.
The fact that time decimalisation was sponsored by media conglomerates may be seen as further evidence.
Footnotes and references
- ↑ source
- ↑ source
- ↑ source
- ↑ Considered about as likely as getting any sense out of DMHII(I).
- ↑ Considered unlikely - recent investigation has shown that Home may not actually be a planet at all, but a gaseous nebula or even a star - which rules out a day/night cycle completely.
- ↑ relatively speaking
- ↑ not to be confused with deceitime
- ↑ also referred to as a deciday