On metric time

For quite some time, I have been frustrated when attempting to microwave something for half a minute. Instead of entering the cook time as 30 seconds, which would be half a minute, I am consistently inclined to enter 50 seconds. This is because I automatically interpret 1 minute as being composed of 100 units rather than 60. I realize that this is somewhat of a misinterpretation on my part, but that doesn’t change the fact I consider a metric-based temporal system to be much more natural and sensical.

In fact, it’s not totally accurate to say that my interpretation of 1 minute being composed of 100 units instead of 60 is a misinterpretation. The length of time that elapses during 1 minute is really composed of an infinite number of units – it just depends on the duration of each unit. It is certainly not the case that 1 minute is composed of 100 seconds, since 1 second is an absolute value. (If you want to know, 1 second is technically defined as the amount of time it takes for a cesium-133 atom at 0 Kelvin to transition energy between its magnetic dipoles 9,192,631,770 times). But it is the case that 1 minute is divisible into 100 equal units, these each being one one-hundredth of a minute in duration.

My microwave-related frustration, however, was useful in helping me realize the arbitrary nature of the temporal divisions used by Western society. A year, for example, actually has many different definitions depending on points of reference and other astronomical considerations. What most people think of as a “year” is really a “sidereal year,” and is defined as the amount of time it takes for the Earth to make one revolution on its orbit around the sun, measured from a fixed frame of reference. This time is 365 days, 6 hours, 9 minutes, and 9 seconds. I’m not going to go into the many other types of years because defining a year is not my concern here.

A year is often subdivided into 12 units, called months, which are not of equal duration. Months are made up between 28 and 31 smaller units called days, which is the amount of time it takes for the Earth to complete one rotation about its own axis. A day can be measured in seconds, which have the exact definition described earlier. If so measured, a day is 86,162.4 seconds in duration. Building larger units from seconds, we can have a minute, which is 60 seconds; we can also have an hour which is 60 minutes or 3600 seconds. So a day can be measured in the smaller units of hours for 23.934 hours per day. In common usage, this number is assumed to 24, but this isn’t exactly accurate.

So there is basically no coherent consistency with regard to the Western measurement of time increments, especially not generated from a single base unit. This is why I am a proponent of metric time, which, like other metric systems, divides each segment into units of 10. A system of metric time would make much more sense and would be considerably easier to learn and calculate mentally than the current system.

One major disadvantage to this is that a metric time system cannot include both years and days (at least, not as they are currently defined). This is because both years and days are based on natural phenomena that don’t bare any temporal relation to each other. There is no way to divide a year into a number of days that is even a whole number, let alone a number divisible by ten. So either a year or a day as a unit of measurement (in the same system) must be done away with. I think the more convenient choice is to eliminate the day from this system. After all, it’s not as if the notion of a day will ever disappear. It’s one of the most common and regular units for measuring time in the world. But the important point is that it cannot be part of the larger metric time system that I am about to propose.

Let’s say we start with a sidereal year, as defined above. From the start it must be acknowledged that the whole system will be Earth-specific, since a year depends on the size of a planet’s orbit and also on the speed that the planet travels it. But for most people on Earth, I don’t think a year is going to cause too much fuss. (Incidentally, if anyone has suggestions for a more universal starting point, I highly encourage you post a comment to this blog.)

A year, then, can be said to be a base unit equal to 1.

A year can be divided into 10 equal units called deciyears. Deciyears would be somewhat like months are in the current system, but they would be slightly longer in duration. Each deciyear would last about 36.53 current days.

A deciyear can be divided into 10 equal units called centiyears, and there would 100 of these every year. Each centiyear would last about 3.65 current days.

A deciyear can be divided into 10 equal units called milliyears, of which there would be 1000 every year. Each milliyear would last about 8.74 current hours.

A milliyear can be divided into 10 equal units, but unfortunately the metric system does not have a nice prefix for the ten-thousandth place. But since the duration of one ten-thousandth of a year is pretty close to 1 current hour, I propose to call this unit an houryear. 1 houryear would be about 52.44 current minutes.

An houryear can be divided into 10 equal units, but there is no common prefix for the hundred-thousandth place either. The duration of such a unit would be about 5.24 current minutes, so I would call it a minuteyear.

A minuteyear can be divided into 10 equal units called microyears. There would be one million microyears in every year, and each would last about 31.47 current seconds. The only reason I proposed houryears and minuteyears was so that the system would be totally consistent as far as having a name for every unit, but these units could be equally expressed in microyears. A minuteyear would be 10 microyears, and an houryear would be 100 microyears.

A microyear can be divided into 10 equal units, but again there is no established prefix for the ten-millionth place. I would call this unit a secondyear, which would last about 3.15 current seconds. That’s probably about as small as any common person would want to go, but of course smaller units would be necessary for scientific and other specialty purposes.

Naturally, it would be necessary to use this system in the other direction as well. 10 years would be a decayear, otherwise known as a decade. 100 years would be a hectoyear, the same as a current century. 1000 years would be kiloyear, or a current millennium, and so on.

This whole system would really help me out when I use the microwave. I could place my plate of left-overs in, close the door, and press 1-START, since 1 would probably be assumed to mean 1 microyear (or approximately 30 current seconds). I’m making a cup of tea? No problem: 3-START. This gives me just a hair over a current minute and a half.

And while I’m on the subject, this is a perfect time to bring up a very related topic. According to our common Western calendar, we are in the year 2008. Supposedly, this means that the current year is 2,008 years after the birth of Jesus Christ. (Incidentally, there is archeological evidence that suggests Jesus was probably born about 6 years earlier, but apparently it’s too late to change things now.) I understand that societies are inclined to use culturally significant events as starting places for marking time. But from a scientific perspective this doesn’t make any sense.

Please realize that my qualm is not reflective of any anti-Christian sentiment or a desire to distance myself from religious influence. My qualm is that it seems incredibly odd to use any system for marking time which allows for time to be marked before 0. This is precisely the reason that the Kelvin scale is far superior to the Celsius or Fahrenheit scales for measuring temperature – 0 means “no temperature,” and you can’t get lower than that; you can’t have “negative temperature” on the Kelvin scale. Likewise, why should it be possible to have negative time?

It would be far more sensical in my opinion to place 0 at the point at which we cannot go back any further, perhaps the Big Bang. This, of course, is impossible right now for a few reasons. First, we don’t have an ultra-accurate dating system for the Big Bang. Second, we can’t be certain that the Big Bang (if it in fact occurred) really marks 0. If the universe has big banged and then big crunched multiple times, this would certainly affect where 0 is to be placed. This is especially true if this has been happening for an infinite amount time, in which case it’s time to rethink everything.

We have to take one step at a time, though, and the Big Bang seems like a much more reasonable starting place than the birth of a religious icon. Unfortunately, we will have to wait a while longer before the dating technology allows us to get a more precise idea of when it occurred. Also, please note that this argument does not take into account whether time in fact exists at all, but that is a topic for another day.