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I was thinking about Star Trek today. I wonder what clock the Federation uses. I think I remember something on DS9 about a 26 hour clock. If they use that then they wouldn't be aligned with the Federation base on Earth. Also, whenever a captain hails another ship that ships captain is always awake. Is the entire universe using the same clock?

What do you guys think? Geek it up people.

Day length isn't going to be consistent anywhere (Earth is 24 hours, Mars is 24h 39m, etc.), so it's pretty arbitrary what a starship uses for its day. It could be dependent on the biology of the crew (not everyone comes from Earth and its 24-hour day) and 26 hours may be a good compromise for most species, or 26-hours could be the day length of Cardassia and/or Bajor and they kept it that way on DS9. The differences in time is easily solved by having shifts operating around the clock (whatever the local clock for that ship or planet may be) so there's always someone there to answer the phone.

So it doesn't matter that times match between a starship and the Federation, since each planet in the Federation is going to have a different day length. And since Starships have artificial environments, it's possible they are all kept on the same clock, which would explain the captains being awake at the same time.

:nerd:

In stargate they just kind of explained it with all life supporting planets being relativly similar to earth. Similar size and distance from their stars and all that.


Now how everyone speaks English I'm not quite sure.

I believe humans actually prefer to operate on a 25hr cycle, dunno if that's why ST goes with the longer 'day.'

--Patrick

ST has time beacons across the quadrant (there's an episode that was on TNG a few weeks ago where the Enterprise was caught in a time loop, and when they got out they had to re-synchronize with the nearest Federation Time Beacon.) to keep all the ships in relative time to Earth. (Since warp travel involves travelling faster than light, the ship itself keeps their own time and then re-synchronizes when coming out of warp with a Time Beacon)
Earth uses 24 hours because of it's orbit time / cycle around the sun. Bajor's of course is different so since the DS9 station is Bajoran officially, it runs on 26 hour time. The official use is 24 hours, and shifts are rotated around the clock - morning shift, day shift and night shift... some characters have purposely taken night shifts (Ensign Kim - Voyager, Lt Data - TNG) in order to assume and learn higher ranking positions and advance their careers, but I digress.

Just in Time..
--Matt²

Ah Clocks, one of the most important technologies of all time.

Not so much time, but Geography is my pet peeve with Star Trek. The star-ship comes out of warp, sees a class M planet and the away crew will decide to land on the western continent, or northern or whatever... There is no true East/West. Ours is made up because the English told the world what east and west is in relation to a telescope in a London suburb... For North/South, what if they come out of warp upside down. Or are on the other side of the North Star. How do you decide?

They probably use the MAGNETIC sensors.

...although that leaves for a pretty funny scenario...

(crew prepares to beam down) .."..energize!" (lights flash, engines hum... cut to shot of the planet, away team beams in - upside down! As the transporter disengages all the away crew land on their heads) "OOof....... O'Brien!!"

I assume the planet they circle is one which rotates on an axis. If so, North would be the end of that axis which rotates anticlockwise, and South would be the end which rotates clockwise. East and West would follow. Noting the rotation would also allow the helm to reorient the ship to match the planet's rotation.

--Patrick

Also, they used NESW because "rotationwise" and "counter-rotationwise" or "spinways" make for bad dialogue, even if they are more proper (thanks for using those words a few hundred times, Larry Niven...)