Scalantran Calendar[]
The Scalantran Calendar begins when many of their species, left their planet of origin; an event known as The Swarming. Since they are no longer attached to any particular planet, they no longer use the concept of the solar year.
The basic unit of their Calendar is something that can be translated into English as a Generation. This is actually the time it takes for a Scalantran to become sexually mature. At that point, the youths are initiated sexually and leave the parental mate-group for youth groups which are on a planet. There are two cohorts of children on a ship, spaced half a Generation apart.
A Generation is close to 13 Earth years. The Scalantrans left their home planet approximately 14,000 years ago. One group of Scalantrans entered the Milky Way approximately 6,000 years ago. They then spent time exploring, establishing planets needed for the education of their youths, establishing Meetpoints, and trading with various species that they found during their explorations. One offshoot of them gradually worked its way towards our region of the Galaxy, arriving here a few thousand years ago.
Since the Scalantrans have six digits on each hand and foot, it is natural that their numeric system is in base 12. A Generation is divided into 12 sub-generations. Conveniently, this is within approximately 11% of an Earth year. The Scalantrans then divide each sub-generation into a unit we would translate as Shift. There are 1728 (12 cubed) of these in a sub-generation.
Adoption by Terrans[]
Since the Scalantrans are the traders who travel between planets inhabited by people of Terran origins and are the primary connection between these peoples, their calendar has been adapted by Terrans as their universal calendar.
The term Generation has no meaning to the Terrans so they use Cycles. One twelfth of a Cycle is a Galactic Year, or G-year. There are 400 Galactic Days or G-Days – a Terran interpolation -- in a Galactic Year. Each G-Day is divided into 24 hours, each hour into 60 minutes and each minute into 60 seconds – like G-Days, these last divisions were never used by the Scalantrans, but because the Galactic Day is so close to the Terran day in length, Terrans simply incorporated them, based on ancestral experience dating back to ancient Egypt.
A Galactic Year is equal to 1.11 Terran years, and 405.15 Terran days.
A Cycle is equal to 13.32 Terran years
A Galactic Day is equal to about 1.013 Terran days