[laumars]

> This fundamentally cannot exist. Any "universal" system would drift for observers on different planets.

I hear this argument a lot for why we cannot have a universal time standard but it's a weird cyclic argument because it suggests the measurement of time has to be constant while acknowledging that time is relative. So why can't we have a measurement that is also relative?

For example it could be n "ticks" where mass and speed is at a predefined value and allow for decimal points to account for people travelling faster (for example). This means people's life expectancy (for example) could not be measured in "ticks" because "ticks" is used for time synchronisation rather than measuring the passage of time and those who are only interested in the passage of time can use local time zones just like we do now with UTC for keeping equipment synchronised but local time zones for scheduling our human lives.

[jrhurst]

Speed relative to what?

[laumars]

Fair point, I overlooked that problem. You might get away with using the centre of the galaxy as a point of reference?

To be honest I'm really not qualified to be making these sorts of comments so I'm going to back away from the keyboard and if there's any merit to the idea at all (which there probably isn't) then someone else who understands this stuff better can chime in.