Why mention religion at all?
Because the current global civil calendar is numerically anchored to a religious event. Naming that fact is not an attack on belief; it is simply acknowledging the historical origin of a convention. The Planetary Era proposal does not seek to replace religious or cultural calendars used for worship or tradition — only civil and scientific timekeeping.
Why not just use the Big Bang as the calendar?
The Universal Physical Era (UPE) already does this. However, cosmological timescales are not suitable for daily human life. Planetary Era calendars sit one level below UPE, providing local civil time while remaining interoperable with a universal physical reference.
Why use 1950 as a reference point?
In geoscience and radiocarbon dating, “present” is formally defined as 1950-01-01 UTC. This convention exists for practical scientific reasons and is internationally accepted. Using it ensures compatibility with existing geological and archaeological timekeeping and avoids introducing a new arbitrary reference.
Isn’t Earth’s formation date uncertain?
Yes — within a narrow range. Earth’s age is constrained to approximately 4.54 billion years, with uncertainty of tens of millions of years. At civil or even geological timescales, this uncertainty is negligible. Importantly, the Planetary Era explicitly acknowledges uncertainty rather than hiding it behind mythology.
Why keep the Gregorian calendar at all?
Because changing months, leap years, or clocks would break law, infrastructure, software, and daily life. The Planetary Era changes only the year numbering, preserving full compatibility with existing systems. This is a practical decision, not an ideological one.
Why not start at the beginning of human civilisation?
That simply shifts the arbitrariness. Definitions of “civilisation” vary culturally and geographically, and many such systems quietly retain religious anchors beneath the surface. Planetary formation is a physically defined event that does not privilege any culture or species.
Would this mean abandoning current calendars?
No. Like most standards, adoption would be incremental. Dual dating allows existing calendars to coexist while providing a physically anchored alternative for contexts where long-term thinking matters.
Is this intended to be mandatory?
No. The Planetary Era is a proposed convention, not a decree. Its usefulness — or lack of it — will determine whether it is adopted.
Why would anyone actually use this?
Because it removes an awkward cultural assumption, aligns better with scientific timescales, and offers a clearer sense of perspective. Unlike many calendar reforms, it does not require people to give anything up — only to see time slightly more honestly.
Does this system help AI systems?
Yes, modestly and indirectly. AI systems already prefer explicit, monotonic, physically anchored time references. The UPE → PE → EPE hierarchy aligns civil timekeeping with how AI represents time internally, reducing ambiguity and the need for special-case conversions. This does not give AI new capabilities, but it simplifies long-horizon reasoning and interoperability.
Does this reduce AI energy consumption?
Not directly. Training and running AI models is dominated by hardware and data movement costs. However, cleaner time representations reduce unnecessary conversions, explanations, and contextual inference. Each saving is small, but at scale they reduce wasted computation. The benefit is incremental, not transformational.
What about different planets having different lengths of year?
That is expected, and the system is designed to accommodate it.
In the Planetary Era framework, the epoch (what year 0 represents) is separate from the length of a year. Each planet defines a year using its own physical orbital period around its star, exactly as Earth does today.
- EPE years are Earth years.
- MPE years are Martian years.
Civil calendars reflect local seasons and lived experience. When time must be compared across planets, both calendars are converted to UPE, which provides a common physical reference.
Would this system make communication with non-human intelligences easier?
Potentially, yes – in a limited but meaningful way.
Any non-human intelligence capable of interstellar communication would need to understand physics, orbital mechanics, and cosmological timescales. A timekeeping system anchored to planetary formation and nested within a universal physical reference removes cultural and religious assumptions that would otherwise require explanation.
The goal is to minimise semantic overhead when explaining how humans locate themselves in time. In that sense, physically anchored timekeeping is more immediately legible than culture-based calendars.
Posted 4.54/075-12-29
Edited 4.54/075-12-29