What? Me tell HER she has to wait another 8 months to turn 5? Not gonna happen.

SciFi Question of the Day: If your employer transferred your entire family to a new planet right before your kid’s birthday, how would you calculate when all the family’s birthdays would be on the new planet?

Facebook Answers:

  Gwendolyn Wilkins I’m sure there’d be an app for that ;P

  AmyBeth Fredricksen What if you had to tell your kid “Darn, it looks like we just missed your birthday, it won’t come around again on THIS planet for another 10 months or so…”

  Mary-Anne McDermott Considering that different planets can have different lenght days and years – the easiest thing would be to convert back to Earth month/day and then apply that to the new planets calandar in order to celebrate them. This way, if the planet your working on takes 4 earth years to move around it’s Sun – you would end up celebrate 4 times or end up doing what people who are born on leap years here – get a close as you can.

  Gawain Ouronos In all honesty, unless there was a newborn, I would probably still be using “Old Earth Time” – as in “you know, it would be your birthday today on Earth” or some such thing.

Their “birthday” would always be related to their “birth planet”, if it was up to me. Sure, let them celebrate a “New Planet” yearly anniversary to mark the day we moved, but I would insure to keep track of time/date variance.

   Gaul Stone What if your kid had to tell you that because of the much faster orbit of this planet they decided to age in line with their new home which means they now have a birthday once every old earth week 😛

  Gawain Ouronos I would tell the child that would mean moving out that much faster… 😛

  Mary-Anne McDermott Gaul – in that sort of situation, I have a feeling the age of majority would be much older than 18 – since an 18 year old would be only learning to walk & talk.

  Gawain Ouronos Mary-Ann: true, but they would have the disadvantage of all those Earth Years to work with as well…

  Branli Caidryn We get new birthdays. Problem solved (mostly cuz I’m lazy)

  Gaul Stone Sending them dilithium mining as soon as they can walk and hold a pick sounds so appealing though 😀

  Daniel Beard depends on what the planetary year is. if it is close to the earth’s, recalculate for the new planet. if it is not, continue with the old Terran calendar.

Google Plus Answers:

  Ashley Wade  I’d leave that to the professionals.

  Thomas Sanjurjo  Assuming there is no galactic standard (independent of any planetary system or based on homeworld) by which we have already been gauging our birthdays, we recalculate based on current planet, having it be fortunate that one of our children is having a birthday close to the move.

  Miaka Kirino  Well, I’d celebrate the one kid’s birthday as close as possible to what it would have been on Earth, then hope I had enough time before the next birthday to work out the new planet’s calendar as compared to Earth’s and pick the proper equivalents.

  Charles Moore  Take my PC. It has a clock/calendar!

  Sharyn DIGeronimo  Don’t know, but GREAT question.

  Richard Erickson  I’m with +Thomas Sanjurjo

  Charles Moore  Reset. Use arrival day at the new world instead of birthday at old world.

  Richard Erickson  Could go arrival day +”x” number of days (how many days would you have waited for your birthday on the old world). ?

  Charles Moore  The other advantage to Arrival Day is that you don’t have to fight through the math of different lengths of years and days.

  Mike St  You mean this is at a point in history that doesn’t have a universal standard dating system? Hmmm…. I would convert from current to new and stick to the same time frames even if the new planet had a longer or shorter orbit.

This question was so much fun, I decided to write a short story to go with it!.

I would love to hear what you think! Even if you are reading this post a year or more after publishing, I hope you will leave a comment with your own ideas on this topic.

The previous SciFi Q of the Day is Little Green Men with Lightbulbs