Universal Times
v4.2 · hydrogen-anchored · three systems
Base-10 face. Ten loops in the local day — this rock’s spin, cut in ten. A tick is 1/100 000 of that solar day, not a renamed second. Mars divides Mars. Face looks the same; ticks run slower. Three solar hands — Loop, Arc, Tick — tell you where you are. Gold pips are duration: Pulse on the outer gold ring, Tide on the inner one. Same length on every planet. Hours are not on this scale. SI leftover is inside the tick.
Say it: “—”
~70 s · ten pulses is a wave
~12 min · ten waves is a tide
~2 hr · ten tides is a spin
Half is half. Five is halfway to the next word. You already know how to count to ten.
Solar Clock. Local day coordinates.
Same length on every planet.
Quants since cosmological t:0.
System 1 · Solar Clock
Answers “what time is it here?” t:L:AA:TT. Loop 0 is the start of the local day. Loop 5 is midday. A tick is 1/100 000 of this planet’s solar day — whole globe, same length. It eats the SI leftover past 24 h. Not a second. Do not say “in 3 arcs” and do not say “it’ll take a tick.” Arcs and ticks are coordinates.
System 2 · Universal Duration
Answers “how long?” Powers of the hydrogen-1 period, from a GQ (~0.70 s) out through Epoch, Era, Age, and Eon. Cascaded remainders, live. Same length on Mars. Same length in the Kuiper belt. Near a large gravity well the local rate shifts — asterisk the reading on the DAG, don’t rewrite the stick. The bars on the clock are the mouthful: Pulse, Wave, Tide. Count to ten. There is no calendar here. An eon does not have months. Season on this stick is ~81 days of hydrogen flips. It is not Earth’s orbit quadrant.
How to say it
Hours are a costume. They are Earth’s spin wearing a duration hat. Ask a Martian for “three hours” and you have already lied — their day is a different length, so their hour is too. A pulse is 1011 hydrogen flips. That does not care which rock you are standing on. The solar face looks the same on every planet; the ticks run faster or slower with that planet’s spin. Generation on generation of both hands — quant and tick — until “half a tide” is as boring as “an hour.”
Three questions. Three mouths. Mix them and you get 24, 60, and a calendar that thinks it is physics. Duration Season is hydrogen. Solar seasons are the four orbit marks on this star.
- What time is it here? Solar Clock. t:7:42:00. Casual: “seven forty-two.” Coordinates. A place on the face.
- How long will this take? Duration. “Half a tide.” “A spin.” A length. Same length in the Kuiper belt. You can still say tomorrow for the next local solar day. Don’t say hour. Don’t say it’ll take a tick.
- When exactly? Quant accumulator. Machines. You almost never say this out loud.
| Say | Means | Old habit |
|---|---|---|
| Give me 3 pulses. | ~3.5 min | “a couple minutes” |
| Half a wave. | ~6 min | “give me five” |
| That ran 3 waves. | ~35 min | “half an hour” |
| Half a tide. | ~1 hr | “an hour” |
| I need a tide. | ~2 hr | “a couple hours” |
| Back in a spin. | ~20 hr | “tomorrow-ish” |
| 2 currents. | ~16 days | “two weeks” |
| A season. | ~81 days | “a quarter” |
| An epoch. | ~2.2 yr | “a couple years” |
Ten of the smaller word is one of the next. Double it, triple it, say five, say half. There is no “minute” between pulse and wave on purpose — “4 or 5 pulses” covers five minutes, and the gap is 10×, not 60×. GQs are the twitch. Machines count those. You don’t.
Do not say “I’ll be there in 3 arcs.” Arcs are a place on the clock, like saying “I’ll be there in 3 o’clock.” Meeting at t:7:30. Arrive in 5 pulses. One is a door. The other is a walk.
Solar calendar
This star. Weeks only. A week is 5 solar days. Week 1 through week 73. No months. No leap day. No week 74. 100 000 ticks already ate the fraction past 24 h SI. Seasons are the four orbit marks — solar position, not intercalation. 2026 is a pointer to the inherited revolution count so a bank still parses. DST is a political shift of the face; the definition follows the sun. The Engine leaks standing every 10 days. Auto H reads 10 days of till cash. Same number. Different job.
- March equinox · week 16 day 4 (day 79)
- June solstice · week 35 day 2 (day 172)
- September equinox · week 54 day 1 (day 266)
- December solstice · week 71 day 5 (day 355)
| Tue | Wed | Fri | Sat | Sun |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |