Friday, 16 June 2034, the Unix time value will equal the current year, month, date and hour (2034061609). At 03:14:08 UTC on Tuesday, 19 January 2038, 32-bit versions of the Unix timestamp will cease to work, as it will overflow the largest value that can be held in a signed 32-bit number ( or ). Before this moment, software using 32-bit time stamps will need to adopt a new convention for time stamps, and file formats using 32-bit time stamps will need to be changed to support larger time stamps or a different epoch. If unchanged, the next second will be incorrectly interpreted as 20:45:52 Friday . This is referred to as the Year 2038 problem. At 06:28:15 UTC on Sunday, 7 February 2106, Unix time will reach or seconds, which, for systems that hold the time on 32-bit unsigned integers, is the maximum attainable. For some of these systems, the next second will be incorrectly interpreted as 00:00:00 Thursday . Other systems may experience an overflow error with unpredictable outcomes. At 15:30:08 UTC on Sunday, 4 December , Unix time will overflow the largest value that can be held in a signed 64-bit number. This duration is nearly 22 times the estimated current age of the universe, which is (13.7 billion) years. In popular culture Vernor Vinge's novel A Deepness in the Sky describes a spacefaring trading civilization thousands of years in the future that still uses the Unix epoch. The "programmer-archaeologist" responsible for finding and maintaining usable code in mature computer systems first believes that the epoch refers to the time when man first walked on the Moon, but then realizes that it is "the 0-second of one of humankind's first computer operating systems". See also Epoch (computing) System time Notes References External links Unix Programmer's Manual, first edition Personal account of the POSIX decisions by Landon Curt Noll chrono-Compatible Low-Level Date Algorithms – algorithms to convert between Gregorian and Julian dates and the number of days since the start of Unix time Calendaring standards Network time-related software Time measurement systems Time scales Time 1970