In the original 1978 science fiction movie and television series Battlestar Galactica, the characters used unusual units to measure time and distance, though sometimes earth units are used—such as PSI on a coolant gauge in the episode "The Captain's Hand." 1978 (MCMLXXVIII) was a common year starting on Sunday. ... Science fiction is a form of speculative fiction principally dealing with the impact of imagined science and technology, or both, upon society and persons as individuals. ... Battlestar Galactica is an American science fiction movie and television series, produced in 1978 by Glen Larson and starring Lorne Greene, Richard Hatch and Dirk Benedict. ...

Daily Units

The daily units were based on the decimal system. The mainstream interpretation is as follows:

• A micron is roughly equivalent to one second.
• A centon is 100 microns, and roughly equivalent to 1.66 minutes.
• A centar is 100 centons (stated in episode "Take the Celestra"), and is roughly equivalent to 2.77 hours.
• A cycle (day) is 10 centars, and roughly equivalent to 27.7 hours.

Others prefer an interpretation more similar to earth time:

• A micron is roughly equivalent to about half a second.
• A centon is 100 microns, and roughly equivalent to 0.83 minutes.
• A centar is 100 centons (stated in episode "Take the Celestra"), and is roughly equivalent to 1.38 hours.
• A cycle (day) is 20 centars, and roughly equivalent to 27.7 hours.

Another interpretation is that the writers were using a variation of metric time or decimal time, in which a roughly Earth-standard (24 hour) day is equally divided into base 10 units: Metric time is the measure of time interval using the metric system, which defines the second as the base unit of time, and multiple and submultiple units formed with metric prefixes, such as kiloseconds and milliseconds. ... French decimal clock from the time of the French Revolution Decimal time is the representation of the time of day using units which are decimally related. ... Decimal, or denary, notation is the most common way of writing the base 10 numeral system, which uses various symbols for ten distinct quantities (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, called digits) together with the decimal point and the sign symbols + (plus) and − (minus...

• A micron is 10 micro-days, a "decimal second": 0.864 of a second.
• A centon is a centi-day, a "decimal minute": 14 minutes, 24 seconds.
• A centar is a deci-day, a "metric" or decimal hour: 2 hours, 24 minutes.
• A cycle (day) is a full day: 24 hours.

It should be noted that some confusion was caused by the use of "micron", on Galactica, with real world measurement micron which is one millionth of a metre (0.00003937 of an inch). Especially when used as an estimated time until contact, it could be confused with an indication of distance. Look up micro- in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Centi (symbol c) is a SI prefix in the SI system of units denoting a factor of 10-2, or 1/100. ... deci- (symbol d) is a prefix in the SI system of units denoting a factor of 10−1 (1/10). ... The word micron has the following meanings: A micrometre (American spelling: micrometer, symbol µm), that is, one millionth of a metre. ...

Calendar Units

The weekly, monthly and yearly units may have been based on multiples of 4, 10 and 12, since the 12 star systems of the colonies replicated the Zodiac, the cycle of four in nature, and the need for a digital space-faring time independent of planetary time. With twelve different planets in twelve star systems, none of the colonies could have measured their days and years the same way, therefore an independent system of measuring time was necessary for space travel and military use. (On Earth, a similar situation exists with Commercial Aviation and the NATO military alliance using a standard Zulu time synchronized with Greenwich Mean Time.) It has been suggested that this article be split into multiple articles. ... UTC also stands for the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Coordinated Universal Time or UTC, also sometimes referred to as Zulu time, the basis for civil time, differs by an integral number of seconds from atomic time and a fractional number of seconds from UT1. ... Time zones of Europe: Light colours indicate countries not observing daylight saving Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is a term originally referring to mean solar time at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich in England. ...

• A secton of 8 cycles (days) is roughly comparable to one week.
• A quatron of 16 days is roughly comparable to a fortnight. The quatron is so called because it is four units of four days each.
• A sectar of 32 days is roughly comparable to one month.
• A yahren of 400 days is roughly comparable to one year. A yahren includes 12 sectars named for each of the colonies, and an additional 16 days (4 days per quarter) as interstitial holidays. The name is similar to the German Jahre (meaning "years").
• A centuron of 100 yahren.
• A millennium of 1000 yahren.