What is the baseline date for the Google default time format?

Join the discussion
Registration is free. Ask a follow-up in this thread, or start your own.
6 replies · 2K views
Messages
7,830
Reaction score
13,158
TL;DR
How to decode Google time into Human.
Hi,
Just opened some .xml file in which time is given as a 10 digit number starting with 1570. I assume it represents the number of seconds from some baseline date. Anyone know if this is it and if so, the baseline date?
Thanks.
 
Physics news on Phys.org
WWGD said:
Thank you. Just looked it up , it is the number of seconds from/since January 1 00:00 . I will start using it ;).
Yes, Unix time is the number of seconds since 00:00 on 1 January 1970. Note that leap seconds are ignored i.e. each day in Unix time is exactly 86,400 seconds.
 
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: WWGD
pbuk said:
Yes, Unix time is the number of seconds since 00:00 on 1 January 1970. Note that leap seconds are ignored i.e. each day in Unix time is exactly 86,400 seconds.
Yes, thanks, my bad, I just edited. it seems kind of a pain to go back and forth between the dating systems. I guess we divide by 31557600 and add the quotient to 1970, then we kind of run into issues with the remainder since months have unequal number of days. Not impossible but doesn't seem straightforward. Sure someone has come up with a nice enough translator. Edit: Will look one up and post it if I find one when I get more time.
 
There's actually a cunning formula which I can't lay my hands on at the moment, but conversion functions exist for most languages, or you can use any of many online converters (search 'unix converter' or 'epoch converter').

Edit: or use this one:
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Likes   Reactions: WWGD