Units of time/Continuity

» See units of the times sorted by names.

Transformers, being extraterrestrials, are often overheard stating measurements in units that are unfamiliar to humans. Further, Transformers in different universes often use different units for measurement, and sometimes even use the same unit name but define it differently. Following is a list of units of time that Cybertronians have been observed using.

Specific unit definitions

Marvel Comics

Name	Duration	Description
Breem	8.3 minutes	Originally defined in the Marvel Comics, also used in Dreamwave's comics.
Orn	???	A unit of undetermined duration. It is apparently defined as "one Cybertronian lunar day".
Vorn	83 years	Originally defined in the Marvel Comics, also used in Dreamwave's comics.

Marvel UK comics

Name	Duration	Description
Groon	~1 hour	Roughly equivalent to an hour. In "The Magnificent Six!", Megadeath let his broken Autobot prisoners go with a neutronic blast imminent in two groons. Retelling this event to Silverbolt in 1990, Jazz described the time as two hours.
Joor	???	Used idiomatically like "hour", but of unknown duration. In "The Magnificent Six!", Steamhammer had an inspection parade scheduled at 0700 joors, not long after Cybertron's lunar dawn.

Generation 1 cartoon

Name	Duration	Description
Astrosecond	.498 seconds	Defined by Dreamwave's More Than Meets The Eye #8 as 1/1000th of a breem. Astroseconds as referenced in the Generation 1 cartoon seem to be much shorter, but were never defined. In particular, in "Divide and Conquer" Shockwave states that the space bridge will materialize within 72 billion astroseconds, an interval exceeding a millennium if Dreamwave's definition is applied. Even ignoring this extreme case, astroseconds in general cartoon use appeared to be much less than one second each.
Quartex	???	A unit of undetermined duration. In the very first Transformers cartoon episode, "More than Meets the Eye, Part 1", Wheeljack complains that the shoddy energy conductors he and Bumblebee picked up don't have enough juice in them to last a quartex, so make of that what you will.

Beast Wars & Beast Machines cartoon

Name	Duration	Description
Nano-klik	~1 second	As with the Beast Wars cycle, this unit is on the order of a second, as defined by the series' story editors. Used similarly in IDW comics.
Milli-cycle	???	A unit of undetermined duration. It was often mentioned since Episode 6 in Beast Wars cartoon.
Cycle	~1 minute	Beast Wars cartoon story editors Bob Forward and Larry DiTillio stated that the "cycles" used in their series were very roughly equivalent to a minute. Maybe more, maybe less, but something of that order of magnitude.
Mega-cycle	~1 hour	As with the Beast Wars cycle, this unit is on the order of an hour, as defined by the series' story editors. Used incongruously in "The Agenda (Part 1)" to refer to a much longer span of time. (One of the Tripredacus Council says, "His ship and the Axalon both vanished last megacycle. The Maximal probes never found them.") Ben Yee cites a statement from DiTillio that another unit—the deca-cycle—is roughly year-like in length. This may be the unit that was intended for that line of dialogue.
Day	~20 hours	DiTillio volunteers that Cybertron's rotational period (a "day") is ~20 hours.
Solar cycle (Beast Machines)	~1 day	In the Beast Machines episode "The Weak Component", Rattrap uses the term "half a solar cycle" to describe the amount of time the Maximal would leave Megatron alone in order to regain his strength: one night, from dusk-to-dawn.
Deca-cycle	~1 year	As with the Beast Wars cycle, this unit is on the order of a year, as defined by the series's story editors.
Stellar cycle	~400 days	Orbital period (a Cybertronian "year") for Cybertron as stated by Larry DiTillio in information sent to Ben Yee.

Unicron Trilogy

Name	Duration	Description
Lightyear	(a very long time)	Used exclusively in the Unicron Trilogy, a lightyear is an epochal unit of time.

IDW Publishing

Name	Duration	Description
Klik	1.2 minutes	Defined for use in the IDW universe by Simon Furman in a forum post.
Cycle	1 hour 15 minutes (1.25 hours)	Defined for use in the IDW universe by Simon Furman in a forum post.
Mega-cycle	93 hours	Defined for use in the IDW universe by Simon Furman in a forum post.
Deca-cycle	~3 weeks	Defined for use in the IDW universe by Simon Furman in a forum post.
Stellar cycle	~7.5 months	Defined for use in the IDW universe by Simon Furman in a forum post.
Meta-cycle	13 months	Defined for use in the IDW universe by Simon Furman in a forum post.
Trimara	???	Used in The Ascending issue 2. Likely "3" of something, but who knows what.

Transformers Animated

Name	Duration	Description
Cycle (Animated)	~1.5 minutes	In "Rise of the Constructicons", Bumblebee asks Prime if he can take a coolant break. Prime responds that he just had a break "two cycles ago". From this it sounds as if a cycle is relatively short -- less than a day, certainly -- but its actual duration is unclear. In "Black Friday", Prowl challenges Bumblebee to stay quiet for "ten cycles", and he talks 30 to 40 seconds later. Prowl then informs Bumblebee that he managed to stay quiet for "barely half a cycle", implying that it is close to a minute. The AllSpark Almanac defines it as 100 nanokliks, or about 1.5 minutes.
Deca-cycle (Animated)	~10 days	In "A Fistful of Energon", Ultra Magnus calls to report that Starscream has escaped. He says that it happened "a decacycle ago", and that he would have called sooner but their Tachyon transmitter was missing. The AllSpark Almanac defines it as 10 solar cycles.
Megacycle (Animated)	~2.6 hours	In "Lost and Found" Ratchet estimated that it would take 10 mega-cycles to repair the Autobots' ship even with the help of the AllSpark Key. The Autobots seemed to consider this to be a moderately long time, but not so long for it to be unrealistic that they might repair the ship before the Decepticons come at them in force. Later, in "Rise of the Constructicons", Bulkhead defends the Constructicons' behavior, asserting that "they've been online two, three megacycles tops." The AllSpark Almanac defines it as 100 cycles or about 2.6 hours.
Nanoklik (Animated)	~1 second	In "Home Is Where the Spark Is", Optimus Prime enters Prowl's quarters asking, "Prowl, got a nanoklik?" Also, in "A Fistful of Energon" Lockdown tells Prowl to "Wait a nanoklik." The AllSpark Almanac defines it as the duration of 8,589,934,592 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom, or about a second.
Orbital Cycle	~1 month	In A Bridge Too Close, Part I, Starscream, after hearing all his clones, mutters to himself: "This is going to be a LONG orbital cycle." The AllSpark Almanac defines it as 32 solar cycles or about a month.
Solar cycle (Animated)	~1 day	In "Transform and Roll Out, Part 1", Megatron says he has spent "the last four million solar cycles searching the galaxy" for the All Spark. The parallel to Generation 1's famous "four million years" implies that this unit is meant to be year-like. In "Part 3" Starscream refers to the 50-years of searching between the battle where "he defeated Megatron" and the present as 50 solar cycles, cementing this definition. However, in "Part 2", Optimus Prime and Ratchet have an exchange in which they use "solar cycle" in a way that is a better idiomatic match for "day" than "year". Further episodes continue with the "day" definition. The AllSpark Almanac defines it as 10 megacycles, or about a day.
Stellar cycle (Animated)	~1 year	In the Animated episode "Along Came a Spider", Blackarachnia says that her accident occurred "a thousand stellar cycles" ago. Further, in "Megatron Rising - Part 2" Megatron refers to both "fifty stellar cycles" and "four million stellar cycles", using the term in the way that solar cycles had previously been used. The AllSpark Almanac defines it as 320 solar cycles, or about a year.

Note

The names of the units used in more than one continuity are:

• Cycle
• Deca cycle
• Mega cycle
• Solar cycle
• Stellar cycle