Nervous about next year? Is the whole idea of a new millennium too much? Or is it just that large round numbers like 2000 seem scary? The solution is really quite simple: try switching calendars. Methods of counting out the days are mostly arbitrary anyway, and there's nothing magical about our system.
Hebrew reckoning, for example, says it's now the year 5759. The Japanese are celebrating 2659. And if those systems seem too capricious, mark the passage of time with something more natural, like the calendars nature produces, which are based on recurring physical phenomena. Solar and lunar eclipses, for example, repeat every 18 years and 11.33 days, an interval called a saros. The period occurs when three separate lunar cycles--the full-moon cycle of 29.5 days, the moon's close-approach-to-Earth cycle of 27.55 days, and the moon's return to the sun-Earth plane of 27.21 days--come together. The saros, all 6,581.33 days, ...
