17 Fifth period of stardates: the next generation
Description
This article is from the Stardates in Star Trek FAQ, by Andrew Main zefram@dcs.warwick.ac.uk with numerous contributions by others.
17 Fifth period of stardates: the next generation
Note that ST:TNG stardates have five digits before the decimal point, where
ST:TOS stardates have four. This would seem to suggest a change of outlook on
the part of the Federation, from short-term to long-term. This coincides with
the change from stardate units being convenient fractions of Terran days to
being a convenient fraction of a year. Also, the length of stardates in
ST:TOS could allow for up to about 5.4 years before needing to be reset to
zero, whereas the ST:TNG stardates only need to be reset once a century.
(Presumably one often needed to specify which period of 5.4 years one meant by
a particular stardate.)
The Chronology proceeds under the assumption that all first season stardates
were in the year 2364, and then all second season in 2365, and so on. There
isn't really any evidence to support this, but it makes things neat. The
production crew have occasionally calculated exact dates on this basis. In
order to keep things simple, it will be assumed that this is how the stardates
actually work. This makes stardate 00000.0 midnight at the beginning of
2323-01-01.
Stardate 99999.9 should be about 50 minutes before midnight on 2422-12-31,
after which the stardates get reset to zero again. However, it is not
possible to state this as being exact, because not all centuries are the same
length. Every fourth century contains 25 leap years; the rest have 24 each.
The difference in the lengths of individual years creates a more immediate
problem: the 1000s of units can't match up exactly with calendar years.
Obviously, one solution would be for the stardate rate to vary from year to
year, making each year 1000 units whether it is 365 or 366 days long. This is
not acceptable as a universal time system, however. The rate changing every
fourth Terran year makes things difficult for the Vulcans, and the Andorains,
and in fact almost every member of the Federation.
So the rate must make 1000 units fit a mean solar year of 365.2425 days
exactly. (Actually that's not quite exact, but that is the exact mean length
of a year by the Gregorian calendar. This is more appropriate, because the
Gregorian calendar is being used to specify dates.) 400 years is exactly
146097 days, no matter which 400 years one counts. By a happy coincidence,
this is exactly 20871 weeks. (This fact is of no practical use, except in the
construction of perpetual calendars.)
For convenience, it can be conjectured that starships on extended voyages --
and maybe some civilians too -- use a standard year of length 365.2425 days.
This doesn't mean they add on an extra 5.82 hours at the end of the year, but
that they distribute it evenly throughout the year. This makes each day about
57.4 seconds longer than 24 hours. In fact, to make chronometers visually
indistinguishable from those previously in use, the second would get longer.
This standard year is exactly 31556952 SI seconds long, but is internally
divided into the usual 31536000 seconds. This makes the `chronological
second' approximately 1.00066 SI seconds, and even Data would have difficulty
distinguishing the two.
The two calendar styles could coexist quite easily, because they would rarely
be more than a few hours different. In order for them to coexist over a long
period of time, they must agree on what day of the week any particular date
falls on. (A consequence of this is that existing perpetual calendars will
still be applicable to the new calendar.) Where there would be a leap day in
the old-style Gregorian calendar, there is merely a jump in the day of the
week. For example, Wednesday 2396-02-28 would be followed by Friday
2396-03-01, missing out Thursday 2396-02-29 which would appear in the
Gregorian calendar.
This new calendar will hereafter be called the "quad-cent calendar". It comes
exactly into line with the old-style calendar every 400 years. Since the
origin for ST:TNG stardates is 2323-01-01, that must be when the two calendars
match up. (The next time will be 2723-01-01.) Hereafter, quad-cent calendar
dates will be written like 2323*01*01, instead of 2323-01-01.
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