Starates are a means of specifying absolutedates in the fictional Star Trek universe. They are decimal numbers, usually rounded to a single decimal place, which replace absolute Gregorian calendar dates. The in-universe behavior of stardates is much less transparent than that of any known calendar because out-of-universe writers chose the numbers more or less at random, depending on the era of Star Trek in question. One of the stated out-of-universe reasons for stardates was the need to establish the events in the series as taking place far into the future without tying the episodes down to a particular date.