Zalanthian Time Inquiry

[Rhyden]

Zalanthian Time can be seen two ways. It can be seen from the perspective of Zalanthians themselves. It can also be seen from the perspective of the players.

My question is this: Is Zalanthian time equivalent to Earth's time?
:arrow: If this is true, then a Zalanthian day is equal to about one and a half Earth hours.

:arrow: If it is false, then Zalanthian time is just summarized for the efficiency of players' playing times.

If this answer can be answered directly, please do so since I'm very curious. If it can't be answered, then perhaps we can dispute and come to a conclusion.

[Larrath]

OOCly, a Zalanthan day is 90 minutes long.
ICly, I'd say that a Zalanthan day and a real day are pretty much the same length, maybe a few hours shorter.

Time is shortened for realism's sake; waiting half a real day to get from Allanak to Tuluk would probably drive most people insane.

[Jacques]

As an aside, I once played on a game that synchronized game time to real time on a 1:1 basis. You'd have tasks that would take 40+ hours to accomplish (some of which you couldn't log off in the middle of without having to start over!). It was, to say the least, horrendous, and I soon found somewhere else to play.

I'm probably wrong, but I tend to think of a Zalanthan day as being about the equivalent of 8 hours in our world (which is then crunched down into 90 minutes of game time). Why? Because people routinely go 3 or more of them without sleeping or even resting. Or go several without eating and are only "hungry". Thinking of it that way makes it easier for me to wrap my brain around these kinds of things.

[Angela Christine]

I begin with the premise that a Zalanthan year is equivilent to an Earth year, because a 17 year old human on Earth would be a 17 year old human on Zalanthas.  Working backwards from a year, everything becomes clear.

There are 21 weeks (231 days) per month, three months (63 weeks or 693 days) per year, and 77 years per King's Age.

Months:

A year has 3 Zalanthan Months or 12 Earth months.
Therefore a Zalanthan Month is 4 Earth months long.
1 ZM = 4 EM


Weeks:

Meh, why bother?  Weeks are stupid.


Days:

There are 693 Zalanthan days or 365 Earth days in one year, so:
693 ZD = 365 ED
1.89863 ZD = 1 ED  Or for convinence:  2 ZD per ED.  A Zalanthan day is slightly less than 12 earth hours long.


Hours:

Going back to years, a year is (693*9)  6237 Zalanthan hours long, and (365*24) 8760 Earth Hours long.
6237 ZH = 8760 EH

So you could just fudge it and say that the hours are about the same.  Or you could go to minutes, Earth minutes, since Zalanthas doesn't seem to have it's own minutes.  A year is (8760*60) 525600 minutes long.
525600 minutes/6237 ZH = 84.2 minutes.
A Zalanthan hour is approximately 84 minutes long.





Don't get confused!  This is comparing Zalanthan time to Earth time as though they were in the same univers (perhaps even opposite sides of the same orbit, with some weird atmospheric affect that distorts and blurs the thier view of the sun, making it look big and red instead of yellow from Zalanthas).  Comparing Game World or IC time to Real World or OOC time is a completely different set of calculations.  Those are covered in Help Time:

Code Select Expand

This table shows you how to convert from Zalanthan time to real time and back.

         Real Time -> Zalanthan Time
         10 RL mins      = 1 ZT hour
         1 RL day        = 16 ZT days
         1 RL week       = ~0.5 ZT month
         1 RL month      = ~2 ZT months
         1 RL year       = ~8.5 ZT years

         Zalanthan Time -> Real Time
         1 ZT hour       = 10 RL mins
         1 ZT day        = 90 RL mins
         1 ZT week       = 16.5 RL hours
         1 ZT month      = ~2 RL weeks
         1 ZT year       = ~43 RL days


See the difference?


Angela Christine

[moab]

I would also point out that the link in my signature has a break down of ZT to RL Time.

[brianhartman]

Thanks Moab, your sig pointed to your page which REALLY helped me out.  I believe it will help my emotes quite a bit.

[Maybe42or54]

The only problem I really see as Zalanthan days being the same as Earth days is this, if they are the same, that means they Zalanthan earth and Real Earth are about the same size. If years are the same length, then it takes the two exactly the same time to move around their star.

Earth is about.. 12 800 km wide.
Surface Area is 153,295,000 km2

So Zalanthas is about.. Michigan's size, right?
Michigan is about.. 147135.82 Sq. Km

So.. Zalanthas is about.. 9.5-ish% Of their world.

Anyone else want to go exploring?

[joyofdiscord]

Surface Area is 153,295,000 km2

So Zalanthas is about.. Michigan's size, right?
Michigan is about.. 147135.82 Sq. Km

So.. Zalanthas is about.. 9.5-ish% Of their world.

Move that decimal point over a tad: .095 %

On the other hand, it's charmingly American the way you accept that Michigan could occupy almost 10% of the Earth's surface, especially when it's an average sized state among fifty.  The entire U.S. probably isn't 10%, although Alaska probably helps quite a bit, being about 1/3 as large as the entire continental U.S., if I remember correctly.

Anyone else want to go exploring?

Definitely.

[Maybe42or54]

Hard to do things in my head.


Anyways. The Suk-krath could be a Red Giant and Zalanthas spins around faster, at about Mar's distance from it.

[Hexxaex]

Anyways. The Suk-krath could be a Red Giant and Zalanthas spins around faster, at about Mar's distance from it.

Finished my Grade 9 science course just about a few weeks ago, so its still fresh in my mind:  Red-giants tend to be cooler than the intermediate mass stars like our Sun.  As a star expands (Reaching the end of its lifespan) the mass stays the same, but the appearance and temperature differs.  A red giant will turn red (duuuhhh), but will be cooler.  Generally, the higher mass of a star, the hotter it will be (ex:  white dwarf stars, neutron stars).

Also, keep in mind, that because the mass of a star doesn't change as it gets bigger, the planet's years will stay the same, providing it's still alive and hasn't been engulfed.  Example:  Saturn's year will be exactly the same when the Sun expands and swells, and so will Mercury's, had it not been killed in a fiery death...

[Angela Christine]

The only problem I really see as Zalanthan days being the same as Earth days is this, if they are the same, that means they Zalanthan earth and Real Earth are about the same size. If years are the same length, then it takes the two exactly the same time to move around their star.

Zalanthan days are only about half as long as Earth days, assuming that years are the same length.

That means that Zalanthas could be in the same orbit of its star as Earth is of Sol.  Or it could be closer but moving slower, or farther away and moving faster.  Heck, it could even be in the same orbit as Earth, but on the opposite side of the sun so we never see it, and the sun only looks red to them because of some weird atmospheric distortion.  :twisted:


Angela Christine

[Maybe42or54]

I refer you to another thread in which CRW and the other one.

I was talking about the orbit so that the Suk-krath isn't half the sky and is the same size as our sun to us.

[Larrath]

After seeing 'massive sun' so many times in-game (or at least, I'm pretty sure I did), I'm led to believe that Suk-Krath appears larger than what our sun appears for it.
Maybe twice the size, or even two and a half times.

I'm not going to waste two seconds thinking about Zalanthan astronomy.  For all we know, the Zalanthan sun moves the way it does because there's some insane dwarven Krathi sitting inside it and moving it around by wiggling his toes.

[Rhyden]

Never mind

[Rhyden]

That would make sense, Larrath, if Zalanthas was closer to Suk-Krath than Earth is to its Sun, the time would be significantly shorter.

But aside from the obvious, I think my question's been answered. Zalanthan time is not ultra-short, just summarized for players' benefit.

[Dracul]

(we're really martians, not zalanthians)
Ahem. Sorry for posting nonsense.

[Angela Christine]

That would make sense, Larrath, if Zalanthas was closer to Suk-Krath than Earth is to its Sun, the time would be significantly shorter.

Closer to what part: the surface, or the center?  If it were equally close to the center, but Suk-Krath is more diffuse than Sol, then it would be closer to the surface than earth is.  So it could simultaneously be the same distance and closer.  Sort of.

Angela Christine

[Rhyden]

That would make sense, Larrath, if Zalanthas was closer to Suk-Krath than Earth is to its Sun, the time would be significantly shorter.

Closer to what part: the surface, or the center?  If it were equally close to the center, but Suk-Krath is more diffuse than Sol, then it would be closer to the surface than earth is.  So it could simultaneously be the same distance and closer.  Sort of.

Angela Christine

Good point.

As well, since we don't know how much of the entire planet the Known World of Zalanthas is, we can't really tell which planet would be closer to their sun.