Legion World Forums LEGION CLUBHOUSE The Legion of Super-Heroes Long Live the Legion! Practical Time Considerations

Okay, time to get serious.

Has the question of days/years and time "zones" ever been addressed in the Legion? Different planets will have different natural years or days, and how will you know if you're calling in the middle of the night when you omnicom or telelink to Lallor? Or has it been stated (or assumed) that everyone is on Earth standards?

For that matter, wouldn't even Legion World have different time zones - or is everything artificial - day/night, (weather of course)....

Since the U.P planets have been able to use a standardized language like interlac, I imagine they have some system for telling time as well. And as for "calling in the middle of the night", that assumes people are still going to bed at night or adhering to some kind of sleep cycle similar to our own.

I would postulate that a thousand years from now, with space travel being as frequent as it is in the Legionverse (there's no day or night in space) and people travelling to other worlds all the time, people adopt their own sleep patterns regardless of the time of day or the rotation of their native planet.

Even taking our little Legion World into account, there's almost always activity regardless of the time of day not only because of the time difference, but our own lifestyles. So the "middle of the night" thing might no longer be relevant.

The original Legion clubhouse had a clock for telling time on other worlds!

{ The original Legion clubhouse had a clock for telling time on other worlds! }

Though what that would "be" for any particular world -- is there a Kallorian Mean Time on Xanthu, say, to latch on to? -- is itself problematic.

And this blithely ignores the effects of time corrections under general or special relativity theory. (Says this Brainiac ... but I had a course on the subject at college.) Still, they're bending relativity until it breaks to use the supposed "hyperdrive" or "space warps" anyway, so that bit of science-realism was discarded long ago.

[DrakeB3003]
{[...] people adopt their own sleep patterns regardless of the time of day or the rotation of their native planet. }

Dawnstar was alluded to, once, as having very little need for sleep, period, it having been bred out of her. With this being reinforced by her chosen pre-Legion profession of tracking, where she'd be navigating in deep-space "warps" -- there they are again! -- for days at a time.

(Hmmm. Having written that, I now can't remember where I actually read that in the published stories. I may not have. I can think of one or two fan-fiction postulators of that idea, though ... as well as myself !)

(Hmmm squared ... that last link to my Mon-el and Dawny story will only work until Wednesday. Public access to Yahoo! Groups Files areas will soon stop. I'll have to put it in my own Webspace. Thanks to FC for starting this thread and ending up generating a reminder of this for me, as well.)

Hope you have time, Greybird, in whatever zone that may be.

Interesting idea, that sleep - one of my great pleasures in this lazy life - would become archaic or that the traditional day/night break would be discarded. Of course, we are already seeing that to some extent with globalized markets, increased use of rotating shift work and availability of commercial establishments and entertainment (such as TV) round the clock.

I seem to recall that, during the Levitz/Giffen eera, a reference was made to the UP operating on a Universal Constant, or Earth Standard time.

It was around this time that the 18 year old age limit was adapted to being the physilogical equivilant of a Terrestrial 18 year old. Thus, characters like Blok, with lifespans measured in centuries get in even though older than 18 since they are still a teenager by their race's standards. Coluans, also with lifespans in the centuries, would also hold to the same rule. However, even though Brainy is pysically an adolescent he is intellectually so far advanced that he gets in.

As far as comunication between planets, I wonder if there is some sort of universal translator in effect, similar to how, no matter what language one speaks in, it comes out as Interlac to anyone wearing a telepathic plug. Since we are talking about interstellar faster than light travel, we are thus talking about bending the rules of time and space when sending messages as well as physically traveling. A Universal translator might hold the message that arrives in the middle of the night local time and play it during the day. However, becasue we have bent the laws of time and space getting the message there, the eventual responce still is percieved as happening "now" fromt he point of reference of the original sender.

You know, I had always thought the planetary clocks were kind of silly for just that reason, but they might actually make sense if they were calibrated in the way you suggested. So we have the time in Metropolis, the clock keeps track of the time in the capital city of Xanthu, and then one can calibrate the time in other parts of Xanthu according to that.

In a world in which time travel is possible through rainbow colored place called "the time stream", I think we have to conclude that the nature of time and space are significantly different from the actual world.