Measuring Time on Krypton
An astute Redditor pointed out to me that my numbers were off for time words in the Kryptonian dictionary. Long story short, I had reversed the Kryptonian year to Earth year ratio and all my calculations were backwards. I have redone the math and updated the entries.
For those of you interested, here's a breakdown of time words, and how their Earth conversions were derived:
The currently-defunct website, Superman Through the Ages, was an excellent source for all things Kryptonian—in it they had a decently-sized glossary of Kryptonian words that have appeared in the comics (you can view the glossary on the internet way back machine here). From the glossary, we can see the following information:
(Note: the words here reflect the tighter, more regular transliteration supporting my language than what is found in the glossary)
- a thrib is "equivalent to an Earth second"
- 100 thribo = 1 dendahr
- 100 dendahro = 1 wol
- 10 wolo = 1 zehtiahr
- 6 zehtiahro = 1 fanf
- 73 zehtiahro = 1 lorakh
- 6 lorakho = 1 ahmzeht
- 73 fanf = 1 ahmzet
It's interesting to note that 6 and 73 seem to important divisions: 6 "days" per "week", 73 "weeks" per year and 73 days per "month", 6 "months" per year.
I digress...
From there, we can start with the dangerous assumption that a thrib is exactly equivalent to 1 Earth second. From that assumption the following math falls out (numbers rounded to the hundredth):
- 1 thrib = 1 second
- 1 dendahr = 100 seconds = 1.67 minutes
- 1 wol = 166.67 minutes = 2.78 hours
- 1 zehtiahr = 27.78 hours = 1.16 days
- 1 fanf = 6.94 days (almost exactly the same as our week)
- 1 lorakh = 84.49 days (roughly 2.82 months)
- 1 ahmzeht = 506.94 days = 1.3879 years
When you look at the math from another angle, the ratios still hold up. The glossary reveals that there are 438 zehtiahro in an ahmzeht. Using this we can do some more math:
- 100 thrib × 100 dendahr × 10 wol × 438 zehtiahro = 43,800,000 seconds per ahmzeht
- 60 seconds × 60 minutes × 24 hours × 365.25 days = 31,557,600 seconds per Earth year
- 43,800,000 ÷ 31,557,600 = 1.3879 Earth years per ahmzeht
Comments (1)
RENATO BEZERRA DA SILVA:
Jun 26, 2021 at 01:21 PM
The article lacks the origin of the Kripton time division. The credit goes to Gary Skinner of Columbus, Ohio, that calculated the calendar and revealed it in a letter to Superman #215 (April, 1969).
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