Portable general timestamp format, not 2038-limited

[greg]

Ilya Zakharevich wrote:
> In pedantic mode: negative timestamps make sense with Big Bang as the
> epoch as well.  (AFAIU, the current way of thinking is that it was
> "just too hot" before the big bang, it is not that "there was
> nothing".)

If Stephen Hawking is right, the shape of the universe
is such that there isn't any time "before" the big bang
at all. It's like asking what's north of the North Pole.

Of course, this may have been replaced with some other
equally bizarre idea by now...

Another thought: If the cosmologists ever decide if
and when the Big Crunch is going to happen, we may be
able to figure out once and for all how many bits we
need in the timestamp.

--
Greg