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CHAPTER 9
The Universal Calendar
THE SEARCH FOR A univcrsal calendar that would enable all people
all
over the world to chart the past and map the future exactly
and precisely has been going on since the most ancient
times. Our ancestors did try repeatedly to find a time-coimting
system that would be independent of human events and happenings
on earth, a calendar that would correlate simultaneous moments
of time in one common system all around the globe.
It is hard to believe that still no such calendar exists. One of
the most backward features of our modern age is our time-counting
system, which was introduced during the Middle Ages by a
Pope who believed that the sun circled the earth and began the
counting of time from an event of uncertain date, the birth of a
Messiah who may or may not have existed. That we use such a
system when we have computers and travel in space seems beyond
belief, but the worst fact is that this outdated calendar has
three ways of counting time. There is our Christian Gregorian
calendar (of Pope Gregory XIII). There is
the astronomical calendar
known mosdy to astronomers. And then there is
the calendar
of mathematicians, who are the only ones to use it.
As an example, let's take the Gregorian date of March 21,
seven years before the Christian era. For one using the astronomical
calendar this would be March 21 of the year —60. The
mathematician needing an expression that can be fed into a com-