The Calibration Society is responsible for calculating the standardized time which we use to navigate between solar systems.

At this stage in humanity’s development, where the species only understands a meager 4% of its known universe, gravity is treated much like an imaginary friend that holds your seat for you while you leave the room to pursue other, more pressing endeavors.

My species uses standardized time to avoid things like flyby anomalies, and navigational problems due to time differences between systems.

You have even encountered these yourselves but on a much smaller scale.

For example, there are multiple instances of flyby anomalies which happened with your Galileo, NEAR, and Pioneer crafts.

These craft appeared to accelerate for reasons that defy the explanations of your finest minds.

Now imagine those accelerations at just 25% of light speed, and what they would do to navigation that couldn’t be recalculated and readjusted on the fly.

The Laws of Gravity aren’t religious dogma.

Calling them “Laws” when they are in reality “habits” is crippling your ability to understand the universe, and your place in it.

Different solar systems and different galaxies have different measures of forces affecting mass and different acceleration factors, therefore, entirely different time structures than what you have determined exists here.

And what exists here is not exclusive, despite how much performance art your scientists can throw out there with their cards held close to their chests, while showing their best poker faces .

Let’s say that you’re going on a journey through interstellar space.

You can declare that the solar system you’re heading to is somewhere around 1500 light years away, but not with any real certainty as to what the exact distance is because you lack real reference points.

These reference points must also be calculated according to their time differences, because that affects their movements, and thus all future calculations since you too will be at a different reference point.

Even here on Earth, you’re essentially looking through a time tunnel at your own sun.

The light from Sol takes about what… eight minutes and twenty seconds or so?

The time you have here is a result of the unique characteristics of what has assembled together traveling at its own particular clip.

That other star system will be functioning under an entirely different time system than here, as will the systems you’re using as reference points in continual calculations.

Bear in mind that I’m not talking in the “Biblical” sense of a day being like a thousand years , and a thousand years being like one day, but there are some serious number to crunch.

This is why we use standardized time, calculated by the Society. Traveling great distances of hundreds and thousands of light years requires the knowledge of what to expect when you arrive at your destination, as well as what to expect when you finally embark upon the course back home.

Anyways, consider this from a business standpoint.
Transporting goods and services between worlds requires that everyone involved be on the same page and also communicating in real time.

You cannot maintain an interstellar economy if you are still using radio waves to communicate great distances with each other, while waiting years for confirmation that your order was shipped.

You just cannot participate in any sort of large-scale extrasolar endeavors without standardized time.

Hence, the existence of the Calibration Society.

Think of them as mathematicians who became something analogous to a credit union, but with time as their currency.

And imagine that credit union could, by putting a hold on your account, cripple your transportation industry as well as your ability to wage interplanetary war.

That is the Calibration Society.