It's compute time, so if you have more than one machine, and/or have multiple WUs running at a time on one machine, then you will earn the badge for so much compute time, before that much real time has passed.

Congrats on your badges. There are 200 year badges to be had, so keep going.

Yes, the way that the badges work is that it's based on CPU runtime. So, a new Ryzen 9 system will chew through WUs faster, and thus do more WUs and more points, than an old i5. But, each logical CPU on the Ryzen 9 gets one day of runtime per day, just like the i5 (of course, a Ryzen 9 can chew through 24 or 32 tasks at once, compared to 4 on your i5, so the Ryzen still gets more runtime and earns badges faster in aggregate).

Not to worry, Good Sir!

I've only been a member about 2 years, and I have over 9 years of work donated.

This is due to my ability to bend time and space.....errr, actually, I was running some older and slower machines before moving up to a faster machine.

The new machine runs work units with ETAs of 1:30:00 within plus or minus 15 minutes of the ETA, a far cry from jobs taking 5-8 hours on the old machines, and these were OPN1 and MCM1 jobs. ARP1s took 2+ DAYS on my oldest machine. I was running OPNs on an old Android cellphone also; surprised it never just burst into flames outright.

But for me the thing is getting the jobs run and returned. Every answer could be 'the one'. Every answer, no matter how long it takes to get is important.

"Science. Technology. For All Mankind." (modified slogan from the movie "Armageddon's 'Freedom. Independence. For All Mankind'). And stand easy, Mr. Willis. We got this one.