292
submitted 4 months ago by jeffw@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[-] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 125 points 4 months ago

Yeah, but in 1.8 trillion years, you're going to be a minute late for everything.

[-] lauha@lemmy.one 46 points 4 months ago

Imagine being 15 minutes late to the heat death of the universe. Unacceptable.

[-] Vigge93@lemmy.world 17 points 4 months ago

Damn right, you'd miss the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster drink before the dinner. Not ok.

[-] Cosmos7349@lemmy.world 33 points 4 months ago

I mean but this should save me some hassle from my current clock that I need to adjust every 10 billion years.

[-] thefartographer@lemm.ee 13 points 4 months ago

The Germans will be furious

[-] kambusha@sh.itjust.works 9 points 4 months ago
[-] iAvicenna@lemmy.world 7 points 4 months ago

Oh shit I missed the sun explosion!

[-] Damage@feddit.it 48 points 4 months ago

Just stick a post-it with: "TODO 01/01/30000002024: set one second forward"

[-] anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone 29 points 4 months ago

... or one second back, that's the problem.

[-] pelletbucket@lemm.ee 20 points 4 months ago
[-] jeffw@lemmy.world 42 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Remindme! 30 billion years

Just give me a little bit of time, I got this. You’re gonna see!

[-] scutiger@lemmy.world 16 points 4 months ago

Surely in 30 billion years nothing could possibly happen to the supercooled strontium to throw that off, right?

[-] nokturne213@sopuli.xyz 12 points 4 months ago

Does it still need a groundhog to tell it when spring is?

[-] fredrik@lemmy.world 6 points 4 months ago
[-] RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 5 points 4 months ago

But the groundhog will be made out of gallium arsenide.

[-] AmidFuror@fedia.io 4 points 4 months ago

Hopefully they will improve with the next model.

[-] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 months ago

Just checking... Was anyone on the team named Igor?

[-] solrize@lemmy.world 0 points 4 months ago
[-] corroded@lemmy.world 19 points 4 months ago

In clocks like this, the "set time" is often irrelevant. It's more important to know exactly how much time has passed since the last time the clock was "checked." If you're running a radio transmitter at 6ghz, that's 6 billion cycles per second. If you synch your transmitter to your clock once per second, it had better be accurate to the billionth of a second.

[-] xenoclast@lemmy.world 10 points 4 months ago

This. Clocks like this are for measuring duration in a scientific context.

[-] MonkderDritte@feddit.de 2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)
[-] xenoclast@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

Oh duh, yeah. The most obvious example.

[-] anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 4 months ago

The other atomic clocks that are averaged to give us our ground truth for time.

[-] Sparkega@sh.itjust.works -2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)
[-] xthexder@l.sw0.com 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Standard seconds are defined based on measurable properties of a cesium atom. The historical definition of 1/86400th of a day doesn't work for science if the duration is inconsistent.

For example the statement:

Earth's Days Are Getting 2 seconds Longer Every 100,000 Years

becomes self-referencing and loses all meaning without some other reference point.

[-] RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 1 points 4 months ago

"I suppose".

Boom, now it's a scientific unit.

[-] todd_bonzalez@lemm.ee 2 points 4 months ago

This is time relative to earth, and the actual passage of time in the universe that we aim to measure doesn't care about the Earth's rotation.

this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2024
292 points (97.7% liked)

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