The Passing of the Years

[James Coote]

One question though: where do you get the information that most planets are tidally locked? I wasn't aware that much was yet known about exoplanets, other than growing numbers and locations.

A while back I read that over time, most orbital bodies end up in tidal lock, though I can't remember where I read it or quite the reason why

Just did a quick search and most stuff to do with tidal locking implies moons locking onto their planet rather than planets to stars

 

[David B]

“Correcting time every ten days is nuts,” Cal said. “Why don’t we use local hours that fit our days instead of re-using the wrong ones from Earth?”

“Gramps explained it once.” Eva’s expression turned mischievous. “Most of Hope’s Founders went space-crazy getting here. Earth hours made them less homesick and sticking with weeks avoided blasphemy. Apparently, when you set foot on a new world you cross your fingers and tread lightly. The last thing you suggest is that God needs more than seven days to knock up a planet.”

Cal laughed. “So what made your Gramps an atheist?”

“Maths and the lack of divine retribution,” Eva replied. “Hope’s days were two hours longer than Earth’s, stretching our week beyond the Bible’s. Lightening should have struck us down by now. Just be grateful we’ve got our own years to keep us young. You’d be a twenty-five-year-old adult on Earth not a kid of sixteen.”

 

[Gumboot]

For my three hundredth post and the first ever thread of my own initiation, I have a request for help.

I need a different word for 'year', without relying on the word 'cycles' which I heard used on Star Trek and hated.

The reason? I have a colony in my WIP that's been on a generation ship for three hundred Earth years before finding a planet and spending a couple of centuries in orbit whilst the terraforming process was completed. To adjust to the seasons and the conditions of their new home the colony had to adjust to the orbital and rotational periods of the new planet to the point where they no longer think in Earth terms of time - due to the distance and a breakdown in communications, they have no contact with the home planet anyway. In fact, they've ceased to think of Earth as their home - only as a distant planet their ancestors once came from.

They've kept hours and minutes, but have changed their understanding of 'days' to twenty-six hours and change and 'years' to five hundred and sixty-odd of these days - resulting in situations where, for example, the age of majority is at ten years old, roughly equivalent to 18 Earth years.

I need to show the difference between their time and Earth time because they are about to make contact with what is essentially an alien culture - another ship from Earth with a much faster propulsion, so from a later and very different society to the original ship. Right now, I'm hoping that I haven't bitten off more than I can chew with this, especially as I have to explain the differences between the two cultures without too much info-dump. But that's another thread entirely.

Basically, I'm trying to explain the differences without info-dumping and, preferably, without always referring to 'Earth-years' etc., which I think will slow it down too much. Any thoughts and suggestions would be appreciated.

It seems logical to me that they'd use the same terms, and that upon encountering a new earth-originating peoples, there would be much confusion in the differential meaning of the two words. I would, rather than distinguish the two with invented terms, deliberately use the same thing and make their confusion and miscommunication part of their interaction.