| IPA Pronunciation | ə·ˈɹɪd·i·ə |
|---|---|
| Traditional Spelling | Aridia |
| Parent Star | Epsilon Indi A |
|---|---|
| Mean solar day | 27 hours 49 minutes 21.1 seconds |
| 1 day 03 hours 49 minutes 21.1 seconds | |
| Length of orbital year | 165.374545 local solar days |
| 191.714051 Earth days | |
| 0.52488447 Earth years | |
| Axial tilt | 1° 37.5' |
| Equatorial diameter | 11624.7 km |
| Density | 4.782 g/cm3 |
| Surface Gravity | 0.7905 × Earth |
| Population | 62 million (3000) |
|---|---|
| Capital | Regulus City, Leonia |
Aridia gets its name from the Latin word for dry, because the world was originally a waterless desert world. Terraforming has given Aridia oceans, but the world retains large desert regions because the oceans only cover about 60% of the planet's surface.
Aridia is a corporate state, with the global conglomerate Aridia Corporation owning all legitimate businesses. This model of corporate state thus functions similarly to a communist state.
The corporate state in turn is owned by the Shareholders. Society is divided into two classes of people: the Shareholders, and the proletariat. In principle, there is nothing preventing the proletariat from becoming Shareholders. In practice, it is very difficult. Individual shares are priced at about three month’s income for the average prole, but it is not possible to purchase fewer than 100 shares at a time. It is also not possible to form a holding company to purchase shares on behalf of a large group of people, because the creation of new companies is illegal.
Shareholders enjoy some privileges that are denied to the proletariat. The Shares pay dividends, and these dividends give Shareholders extra income. The Shareholders can also vote for board members at elections, but the Proletariat cannot.
The corporate state has other similarities to the communist state. The Corporation owns all media, so it can censor the news in any way that it sees fit. The Corporation also suppresses dissidents by suing them.
People on Aridia use the bilineal naming system that became commonplace among Westerners on Earth during the 23rd and 24th centuries. The bilineal system gives the children of a family the surnames of both the mother and the father. Girls place the father’s surname before the mother’s surname, and vice-versa for boys. In this naming system, only the sons of a man pass the man’s surname down to future generations.
In addition to the bilineal system, some people also choose to include the place of birth in the baby’s name, marking this name with the word “of”, or the equivalent word in other languages.
Names of people from Aridia are Biblical, especially men. In the second millennium on Earth, many common men’s names come from the Old Testament (Jared, Ethan, Isaac, Benjamin). On Aridia, the Bible was mined for new names and these new Biblical names have become common. Sample names from 1 Chronicles: Abraham, Alvan, Cush, Dedan, Elam, Hori, Isaac, Ishmael, Ithran, Jalam, Jared, Javan, Jerah, Kenan, Keran, Lotan, Madai, Omar, Reuel, Sheba (man's name used as a girl's name), Sidon, Teman, Timna (a girl's name), Tiras, Zerah.
The world of Aridia uses a metric time measure based on the length of the local day. The base time unit is the day, which is subdivided into 100,000 metric seconds. The day is subdivided into smaller units as follows:
The names used for the metric time measures as defined by the Bureau of Standards are cumbersome. An obvious contraction of "metric second" is "metsec" and the plural of this is too risque for polite usage. To circumvent these name issues, the Bureau of Standards came up with alternative names that were easier to work with. The Bureau endorsed these names as an official supplementary standard and the names were adopted as the vernacular:
A working week is about 200 points long, with five working days being usual. This length is roughly equal to a 48-hour week on Earth.
More information: Aridian Fixed Calendar
Aridia orbits its sun in about 1333⁄8 local days. This time is too short to be a practical base for an administrative calendar. Instead, Aridia uses a perpetual 336-day calendar that ignores the solar cycle. 336 days is a little more than 2 solar cycles. Such a calendar is possible because Aridia has only a slight axial tilt and thus does not have perceptible seasons. 336 local days are roughly equal to 389.52 Standard Days.
The calendar has 12 months of 28 days each. The months are named after the 12 brightest stars in the sky as seen from Aridia. These are Canopus, Sirius, Rigel, Fomalhaut, Achernar, Arcturus, Vega, Betelgeuse, Capella, Hadar, Acrux and Altair. Years are figured from the founding of the colony, with Year 1, month 1, day 1, time 00000 equal to 11:59:31 on 28 May 2760. This day is a Friday on Earth but a Monday on Aridia. It is normal for days of the week to be mismatched in this way when one compares worlds with different rotation periods.
