===== The Common Calendar ===== ==== History ==== After much hemming and hawing and complaining, the scientists of the new society began work on a calendar. Work on an official calendar didn't begin until several months after arrival, due to the need for a space that wouldn't be interrupted and had a flat surface to track shadows on. Later, better refinement methods began, but for many years, that was how time was approximated. The two suns threw the scientists for a loop briefly, but after the horror, and then excitement, a rough estimation for the length of [[Neth]]'s revolution around [[Sol]] and [[Luna]] was made. ==== Timekeeping ==== [[Neth]] is larger than Earth, but only slightly. Its thick atmosphere helps to maintain the energy from two suns, but it hinders the ability to see stars with the naked eye, even without light pollution. Telescopes and magical vision help, but nearby stars are faint and unreliable sources of what's going on in the galaxy. Timekeeping for a while relied entirely on shadows - which was made very difficult with two suns. Later, dripping water was used to tell the time, using Neth's gravity to maintain consistent time. It was quickly discovered that Neth is larger than Earth, but only slightly. Unlike Earth, which rotated 15° every hour, Neth rotates roughly 14.2° every hour - giving hours 64m instead of 60m. Neth's circumference at the equator is estimated to be 45,000 kilometers. While people were willing to use the imperial measurement system, it took a long time before people accepted a twenty five hour day cycle. With the time to complete one rotationIt makes a full rotation in 24 hours of 64 minutes. because the moon is much smaller, night time is much darker. weaker tides would cause less erosion of earth's landmass, so continental shorelines would look different - there would be less soil and mineral from land leaching into the ocean, so life may function differently. there would be more ice ages and warm snaps. there would be larger climatic swings and seasonal temperature changes than Earth, because Neth wouldn't be as stable, and would wobble slightly more on it's axis. this means greater seasonal fluctuations. Whatever life forms did evolve on Neth would have had to develop bigger or more sensitive eyes to help them navigate, forage and spawn at night under this diminished glow. ==== days ==== anyways, we've got about twenty-five hours of sixty minutes - 1500 minutes in a day. it was that, or 62 minutes and thirty seconds in an hour, or 62.5 seconds in a minute ... so an extra hour it was. it was just cleaner. ==== weeks ==== weeks exist, but they're fading in and out. ==== months ==== people call them months, but really, months reflect the seasons. because a year is much longer, and the seasons vary greatly with the presence of two suns, a month represents the different state and location of Neth in placement of the two suns. ==== seasons ====