Eden Standard Time

EST stands for Eden Standard Time and is the official calendar of New Eden, set at the historic Yoiul conference. A day would be divided into 24 hours and the year 365 days with an additional day every 4 years, the same as the calendar of the early settlers.

History

One of the many tasks facing the empires once they had established contact with each other was to set a universal time. Each of the empires naturally had their own calendar and clock, based more or less on the length of the day and year on their respective home planets. This made up for some serious confusion and it soon became apparent that some sort of a synchronized time keeping was needed so inter-racial communications could run smoothly.

Of course, basing this universal time on the calendar of one of the empires was out of the question, the other would never agree to it. So a new one had to be devised. The debates on the new calendar and clock soon boiled down to arguments between three main groups, the Arithmetics, the Traditionalists and the 25ers. The debate was initially conducted between scholars, which then put forth proposals for the politicians and the public to consider. The three main groups each drew their support from different fields of science and academics. The Arithmetics were mainly physicists and engineers, the Traditionalists were mostly historians and archeologists and the 25ers group consisted of biologists and sociologists.

The Arithmetics wanted the new calendar and clock to have nothing whatsoever to do with old planetary-based calendars, instead they wanted to base it entirely on mathematics. They claimed that the physics-oriented nature of the modern world demanded this. The Traditionalists said the only way to go was to base the new calendar as much as possible on the ancient Earth-calendar. All the races, especially the Jovians and the Amarrians, had some data on the old calendar and by combining the data it could be remade more or less in its original form. Finally, the 25ers claimed that the only measurement worth considering in a space-faring age was that of the human body. The internal body clock of humans is close to 25 of the old Earth-hours, thus they wanted to base the new clock on that measurement.

During the long and arduous discussions numerous factions rose, declaring themselves champions of one cause or another. One of them, identifying themselves with the 25ers, was a small Gallentean grass-root organization led by an energetic young man by the name of Cerb Rausolle, although he preferred the pseudonym the Astrologer. Through the efforts of the Astrologer the 25ers gained great public support, spurred on by the surprisingly big network put into place by the Astrologer.

Instead of going the public way as the 25ers the Traditionalists had focused on the politicians, correctly as it turned out to be as it was they that had the final saying. When the final decision was made aboard the Jovian cruiser Yoiul the Traditionalists won comfortably. A day would be divided into 24 hours and the year 365 days with an additional day every 4 years, the same as the calendar of the early settlers. The date was set as 0 YC.

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