Marsvrem—the time-standard on Mars

(see: Interspex, by Clark Nida)

Marsvrem, MV. (M1: mársvrem, from: Mársnoe vrémia = Martian time.)

Official time/calendar on the planet Mars, defined on the meridian passing through the Areopagus, located in central Nix City.

Marsvrem and zemvrem (zulu, or Universal Time) both have hours, minutes and seconds of the same duration However the Martian sol or solar day (24.6598 h) does not contain a whole number of hours. But the MV circadian, or calendar day, does have a whole number of hours, viz. 24 or 25, an intercalary “twenty-fifth hour” being periodically inserted.

The Martian solar year is 668.6 sols, but the MV calendar year is roughly one-half as long, i.e. 336 c. (NB: circadians, not sols). This conveniently gives 12 months of 28 circadians each, the Terrestrial names of weekdays and months being used. Since Mars has never been an agrarian society, the seasonal inconvenience of having a summer year, then a winter year, is a small price to pay for a familiar 12-month calendar, each month starting on a Sunday.

Every fourth year is a “leap year” in which 7 circadians are dropped from the end of December. This synchronises the calendar with the astronomical year so well that it will be millennia before a Gregorian correction becomes necessary.

NB: because the calendar year, whether “leap” or not, contains a whole number of weeks, New Year’s Day on Mars always falls on Sunday, as does the first circadian of every month.

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