Because Stardates in the 24th Century are based on a complex mathematical formula, a precise correlation to Earth-based dating systems is not possible.
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Comment on Star dates – is one day equal to 0,07 SD in TNG?
ValueSubtracted@startrek.website 6 months ago
I’m a big believer in “stardates are nonsense, and should remain nonsense,” but there were efforts made to standardize them in the '90s. They weren’t particularly consistent efforts, though. The full history can be found here. By TNG season 6, they were going with:
A Stardate is a five-digit number followed by a decimal point and one more digit. Example: “46254.7”. The first two digits of the Stardate are “46.” The 4 stands for the 24th Century, the 6 indicates sixth season. The following three digits will progress consecutively during the course of the season from 000 to 999. The digit following the decimal point counts tenths of a day. Stardate 45254.4, therefore, represents the noon hour on the 254th “day” of the fifth season. Because Stardates in the 24th Century are based on a complex mathematical formula, a precise correlation to Earth-based dating systems is not possible.
wjrii@lemmy.world 6 months ago
PumpkinEscobar@lemmy.world 6 months ago
The headings / bearings they use are all over the place too, remember looking it up and it feels like the writers just picked whatever numbers best fit the flow / cadence of dialog they were looking for
KillingAndKindess@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
And they nailed it especially with Sir Patrick Stuart’s short monologues.
klemptor@startrek.website 6 months ago
Not always. On DS9, when the Defiant was departing the station, the heading was given as 180 mark zero - meaning, traveling exactly backward from their current position. This made sense because when docked, the Defiant’s nose is buried in the docking ring.
PumpkinEscobar@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yeah, some shows did have their own consistent-ish systems, but I think some shows used a system that seemed to be relative to the center of the solar system, others from the perspective of the ship (which makes more sense to me, like naval bearings) - memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Heading.
It was a quick lookup from a long time ago, I was working on a 3d space game and was curious if ST had a consistent model I could just use.
Logh@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
“4 stands for the 24th century” so… just a couple of centuries until another y2k style panic?
corvi@lemm.ee 6 months ago
I guess when you’re traveling around faster than the speed of light, time and date stop meaning the same thing as they do back home, so it stands to reason that you couldn’t map stardates to any standard calendar.
At least, that’s my new headcanon.
mosiacmango@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Stardates themselves should be a standard calendar at least amongst themselves.
corvi@lemm.ee 6 months ago
I suppose it could go either way. That would be true if we see stardates as a universal system that applies anywhere and everywhere. If we instead imagine them to include encoded information about local space time, it makes sense that they might be inconsistent but always moving forward.
I am, of course, using “makes sense” extremely loosely here.
mercano@lemmy.world 6 months ago
It also removes an emphasis on any one particular planet’s day or year.