Time Out

As if the Y2K headache was not enough for the computers, we have gone crazy about calendars. Not merely lovers, but the date seems to be the most troublesome factor affecting everyone today. But more of that later. First the millennium issue, whether the year 2000 marks the 21st century. While marketing companies and holiday resorts were busy advertising the millennium bash, the Royal Greenwich Observatory stated that the third millennium and the 21st century would begin at the same moment on January 1, 2001.

It states that the Gregorian calendar does not have the year zero and thus 1 BC is followed by 1 AD. In fact, in the sixth century AD, Dionysius Exiguus decided to reset the system of counting years to honour the birth of Christ so that the year became 532 AD from that time onward. The concept of counting from zero does not exist in Latin and was introduced in Europe many centuries later. The idea of naming years BC came later, introduced by Bede in the eighth century.

So much for the millennium year issue. But the confusion of the year has been the 30 days of February, so to say. Stationery shops had a hard time selling diaries and calendars and some talked of losses running into crores in case February did not have 29 days. My neighbourhood stationery shop had a customer accuse him of misleading the public over the February calendar.

The other interesting astronomical object, the moon, was also in the news but for other reasons. The Old Farmer8217;s Almanac mentioned that December 22, 1999, would witness the brightest moon in 133 years. However, the magazine Sky and Telescope followed it up by denying such a luminescent moon. A three page detailed analysis of the brightness of the moon followed, only to suggest that the moon would not be as bright as predicted. What was rare was that the full moon, lunar perigee the moon8217;s closet approach during its monthly orbit and December solstice all came within 10 hours of each other. Predictably, the media went crazy clicking pictures of the moon.

Or why is this year a leap year? Time for Julius Caesar to move in, who was responsible for beginning leap years. However, the introduction of the Gregorian calendar meant that any century year would be a leap year in case it was divisible by 400. This implies that year 2000 is indeed a leap year. But then the Gregorian calendar was adopted in Britain in the year 1752, when September 2 was followed by September 14!

More confusion on the first sunrise of the millennium. If millennium indeed began at Greenwich meantime on January 1, 2000, then it is the Kathchall islands in Nicobar. But the Royal Greenwich Observatory says that at the South Pole, the sun would have risen at the previous equinox, on September 22, 2000, and would not set till the next equinox, that is on March 20, 2001. Then comes a question of the millennium. Will the South Pole be the first place to see the first sunrise of the new millennium on September 22, 2000, or will it be the last place to see the sunset of the old?