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?
Yes, I get all that. But if I had one, would my wife be on time for church?
“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.
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.