Talk:Universal Time

It seems unlikely that the empires would capitulate completely to a single CONCORD run clock without running their own independent faculties to verify. Nist, for example, is constantly looking at other clock facilities globally. Indeed, CONCORD itself should really have more than one facility... Strategically, it's a bad move to not have a backup network. Internationally, it's a bad move to rely on timing information from someone who one day might be on the wrong side of a conflict. Given how often the empires are at each others' throats and how often they find themselves butting heads with CONCORD, I'd think they'd want to maintain exactly that kind of independence, in case they ever need freedom of action.

Another good reason to have more than one facility is small, unpredictable differences in time-dilation due to the gravity of passing objects (moons, commets, asteroids, or, perhaps even, nearby titans). If the signal being kept is precise enough, then, over time, little perturbations will add up to big problems. Sharing timing frequencies (ultimately the same thing as sending data packets to ships in space) always involves some equipment latency (even if the transmission is instantaneous with entanglement, there is still the time required to processing the signal) and throwing in random differences in the rates of flow of time within and between solar systems (or from ship-board accelerations) is a good reason to not trust a single source.

Ultimately, coordinating time across New Eden would be at least a couple of orders of magnitude more difficult than keeping time on just one planet. There's a lot more variables to worry about. In either case, one clock is not enough.
--Faulx 14:18, 31 March 2013 (GMT)