Authors note: A ‘plausible’ hypothesis for real-world interstellar timekeeping in the Helion Commonwealth.
Commonwealth Unified Time (CUT) is a intergalactic timekeeping system designed to maintain synchronized chronology across vast distances. It uses Gravitational Wave Triangulation—also used for on-board navigation—to establish a consistent temporal framework, regardless of local gravity well creation or Fold-velocity (Faster-Than-Light) travel.
Each CUT timestamp is composed of a planetary reference (year and month since joining the Commonwealth), a graviton cycle counter that increments universally based on artificially created gravitational standing waves, and a high-precision sub-cycle measure called the Standard Graviton Caesium Interval (SGCI).
Ships and colonies retain their planet-of-origin calendars, while gravitational triangulation ensures synchronization to within femtoseconds. The system allows for precise navigation, communication, and coordination across vast distances—including wormhole networks (“Gates”) and interstellar routes—effectively bypassing the relativistic drift that undermines conventional timekeeping. Unlike quasar or pulsar emission chronologies, which degrade in utility over intergalactic distances, this method remains stable across the sheer scale of the void. Onboard, the daily crew use the same time keeping system as the ships planet of origin (e.g. 24-hour cycles for a Earth ship) which is corrected by CUT via the ships onboard computers.
CUT = (PlanetaryEpoch).(PlanetaryMonth).(GravitonCycle).(CesiumInterval)
Earth’s example: S12-CUT 202.3.4216.56
12 = Galaxy sector (Milky Way, Earth’s sector). 202 = Years since Earth joined the Helion Commonwealth. 3 = Earth’s current month in a base-13 system (each month = 28 days), it's currently March. 4216 = Graviton Cycle Count. 1 CUT year = 100,000 Graviton Cycles, with each CUT year lasting exactly 275.25 Earth days. 56 = Standard Graviton Caesium Intervals (SGCIs), which are high-precision atomic "ticks" normalised to each graviton cycle. 1 SGCI tick = 2.39 seconds of Earth time, with 100 SGCI ticks per cycle. Cool, right?”
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“Say Jimmy, how does Commonwealth Unified Time (CUT) really work? Why do we still use Earth time onboard? I’ve got a PhD in the sciences, I’ll have you know!”
“Well, John, planetary time is preserved on every ship to maintain a sense of origin and cultural continuity. Each vessel, though often crewed by mixed-species teams, remains loyal to the calendar and circadian rhythms of its home world. For example, Earth-origin ships still operate in 8-hour shifts across four rotations—reflecting human biological cycles. But here's the clever part: all onboard clocks are corrected by SGCIs—a universal time unit derived from the ratio between gravitational wave cycles (G) and a Cesium-133 atomic oscillation factor at 9.19 GHz (C), using the formula T = G / C. This creates a galactically synchronized 'tick' that remains stable, even under relativistic conditions. Cool, right? Now here’s where things get even more complicated, so bear with me!”
“Sector-wide synchronization is maintained through Gravitational Wave Triangulation (GWT). Multiple emitter stations, distributed across major star systems, broadcast artificial gravitational standing-waves at fixed intervals across a higher dimension (The Bulk: Brane Cosmology) immune to relativistic drift. These pulses arrive at each ship at slightly different times, depending on their position in three-dimensional space. But by triangulating the delays between at least three known sources, ships can correct both their position and internal clock down to the femtosecond. Think of it like 21st-century GPS—or submarine sonar navigation—similar principle.
Together, these systems form the backbone of the Commonwealth’s unified temporal network—a scalable architecture and relativistically aware that enables communication, coordination, and navigation across lightyears. Pretty neat, huh?”
Author’s Note: This does not work in real life, but we are having fun here—fiction inspired by real science!
