Questions

 Let’s start to develop our colonial time clock format based on what has been presented thus far. Since we are going to be building a clock for literally “Universal” time keeping among all current and future human inhabited planets and moons we first need to pick a starting point.

Do we begin our clock at some historical date such as the launch of Sputnik into orbit, or, when the first human touched foot on another celestial body? Although we have travelled to the moon before, we did not stay, just visited, and so is that really a good start date or method of choosing a starting point?

Perhaps the best starting point would be one not related to Earth events but one related to an agreed upon point in the near future. At that point the clock would begin ticking from zero.

The next question to be answered should be, will the time format include calendar dates or just a time code such as hours and minutes. If we are to include calendar periods such as months, weeks and days, what format would those be as there are many different possible calendar formats. I include the following to show how complex and cumbersome it would be to include any current calendar format. 

This question was posed in 2001 asking:

“How many different possible calendars are there? How many years does it take before each calendar is used at least once?” 

The first question - how many different possible calendars are there - is not too difficult. Each year starts on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, ...., Saturday. (So you would think that there are 7 different possible calendars.)

But in fact, there are leap years, too. And each leap year can start on a different day of the week. So there are 14 different possible calendars.

Now, a leap year only happens every four years. Since we aren't going to be at the turn of the millenium anytime soon, we can figure that a leap year happens EVERY four years.

This means that in order for each of the calendars to be used, we must go through at least 14 different leap years. Since the next leap year is in 2004, we can't possibly use each calendar once before 2028. 

Will we really use all the calendars once by then? Notice that there are 365 days in a regular year and 366 days in a leap year. Since 365 = 52 weeks + 1 day, each year advances one day. So since 2001 starts on a Monday, 2002 starts on a Tuesday. In a leap year, we advance two days. So since 2004 starts on a Thursday, then 2005 starts on a Saturday. 

We can make a chart of the day each year starts on to check to see if we use each. We'll put a star before each leap year to remind us to skip two days next year.

 2001 M     2006 Sun     2011 Sat     *2016 Fri    2021 Fri

 2002 T     2007 Mon    *2012 Sun      2017 Sun    2022 Sat

 2003 W    *2008 Tues    2013 Tues     2018 Mon    2023 Sun

*2004 Th    2009 Th      2014 Weds     2019 Tues  *2024 Mon

 2005 Sat   2010 F       2015 Thurs   *2020 Weds   2025 Weds

 2026 Thurs    2027 Fri    *2028 Sat

You can check that we have a Sun-Sat both starred (leap-years) and non-starred (non-leap years).So starting from 2001, we only need 28 years, until 2028, to use each calendar once.

Doctor Jodi, The Math Forum

Does this make sense, are you confused yet?

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