Anticipation is in the air as the clock ticks towards midnight.
It’s the end of the year and in the eyes of many, the end of a decade. But some say, not so fast.
“It was not the end of the millennium on December 31st, 1999, it was not the start of the millennium on January 1st, 2000, and it is not the end up the decade today. We don’t start counting at zero we start counting at one, we always have and always will,” said naysayer Jeremy Mannall-Fretwell
The National Research Council of Canada agrees. The council wrote the following under a question about why the third millennium and the 21st century start on Jan. 1, 2001.
“A millennium is an interval of 1000 years and a century is an interval of 100 years. Because there is no year zero, an interval of 1 year has only elapsed since the start of the era, at the end of the year named 1AD. By a similar argument, 100 years will only have elapsed at the end of the year 100AD. It is, therefore, clear that 2000 years had not elapsed until midnight on 31 December 2000. So the 3rd Millennium and the 21st Century began at the same moment, namely zero hours on January 1st, 2001,” the council’s website says.
However, most people celebrated the year 2000 as the new millennium. And in pop culture, a decade is usually the period starting at zero and ending with a 9. For example, 80s music comes from the period from 1980 to 1989.
That’s the side U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology scientist Andrew Novick falls on.
https://twitter.com/NIST/status/1210611921017360384?s=20
https://twitter.com/NIST/status/1210611928059564033?s=20
https://twitter.com/NIST/status/1210611935135371264?s=20
https://twitter.com/NIST/status/1210611946325729281?s=20
https://twitter.com/NIST/status/1210611952797532160?s=20
But whatever side you’re on, CHEK wishes you a Happy New Year. And if this isn’t the end of your decade, you’ve got one more year to figure it all out.
Ben Nesbit
