Posted on 02/10/2015 5:53:09 AM PST by C19fan
A clock that is so accurate it will lose just one second in 16 billion years has been created by scientists. The device, made using super-cooled atoms held within a lattice of laser beams, is around 1,000 times more precise than the atomic clocks currently used to define time. Researchers say clocks with this level of accuracy could open up new areas of science by allowing tiny changes fluctuations in the strength of gravity to be measured.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Not as accurate as the Doomsday Clock, I’m sure...
Time is on our side.
Time is relative to space. One earth year means nothing on Betazed. Thus the minute and second are obsolete anywhere outside of earth. I'm not sure how gravit affects time, but we certainly know that speed affects time. So.... How can time measure gravity (acceleration)? And what ramifications are they suggesting this has to astronomy?
>> The device, made using super-cooled atoms held within a lattice of laser beams, yadda yadda
Nevertheless, whenever the power goes out, it still blinks “12:00” until you reset it. IF you remember how to reset it.
Sounds like it’s nearly time for God to change the way time is measured...again.
“This is because time in a powerful gravitational field will move more slowly than in a weaker field”
Time has physical characteristics—I have never pretended to understand relativity.
Yes, I get all that. But if I had one, would my wife be on time for church?
Does anybody really know what time it is?
LOL. I tried an experiment several years ago one night before leaving on vacation. Knowing that my plan to leave and my wife's best intentions to meet the plan was typically a 60 to 90 minutes difference, I stayed up late the night before and reset several clocks in the house. (This is before I-phones and such). It was the most relaxing loading of the truck and start of a road trip I can remember. My wife did not realize we were actually on "my" time getting out until we were rolling out of the neighborhood and she told me my clock was wrong. A grin and a wink explained why I was so calm and patient all morning.
“Time is relative to space. One earth year means nothing on Betazed.”
The Betazedites might disagree. Then again, they are more concerned with global warming then how much an earth year is.
Yes it is!
Funny....as accurate as the clocks are, due to the nature of the planet and the solar system, these clocks are too accurate. Another earthquake like 2004 Boxing Day or the Japanese 2011 earthquake causes the time keepers to have to adjust the clocks to compensate.
I would think that a clock of this level of accuracy would make it possible to construct a synthetic aperture telescope with an objective diameter equal in size to the diameter of Earth’s orbit around the Sun.
Such a device might make it possible to map the surfaces of extrasolar planets.
Time is relative from a different perspective. ;o)
There are bugs that only live for hours to days at a time (cicadas as an example). All life has a cycle. In this way we must assume that “a lifetime” is a standard but specific measure to every species on earth. There are reptiles that live 150+ years. I think there were dinasours that may have lived hundreds of years. Of course, the Old Testament (before consistent literacy) refers to certain profits and persons living thousands of years (perception based on the understood normal life expectancy?). Only a few thousand years ago, human life expectancy was considerably shorter.
So, I ask, “What is a long time?”
Think of gravity as: if you don't move per se, you'll get pulled in...so you have to "run away" at least as fast as you're being pulled. Your "run away" speed counts as speed which, as you noted, certainly affects time.
Lewis Carroll was more correct than you thought when you read _Through_The_Looking_Glass_:
"Well, in our country," said Alice, still panting a little, "you'd generally get to somewhere else—if you run very fast for a long time, as we've been doing." "A slow sort of country!" said the Queen. "Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"If we build four of these ultrasenstive clocks, spaced well apart, we could use them as a "gravitational telescope" detecting & mapping moving/changing masses by how each clock gets out of sync with the others. The real interesting question is how _small_ a gravitational shift could be detected.
Yes.
That actually is fascinating. Thank you. Well stated.
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