I checked out Swatch time. Seems pretty similar to the millidays concept presented here. It goes one step further and proposes “internet time” where there are no time zones and consequently its the same time all over the world. Personally I liked the time zone idea since it gave me an idea of whether of not I would be waking someone up if I called.
Millidays is kind of neat for every day use since it keeps days as a unit. The problem is that you can’t expand it to the year in a metrical manner. An improvement in certain ways, but still not quite what I’m after.
I think the only truly metrical use of time shouldn’t be based on earth specific phonomena but upon events that are meaningful everywhere.
On a side note: I don’t think that the choice of a meter was all that intelligent either. I think they just rationalized things till they came up with something pretty close to a yard.
If we had a meaningful metrical unit of time then maybe we could use the light “second” and divide it up till it was small enough to use.
Neither were my favorites but I liked Time Enough for Love the better of the two. My personal favorite is The Moon is a Harsh Mistress (obviously).
tanstaafl (there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch)
“Sometimes I think the web is just a big plot to keep people like me away from normal society.” — Dilbert
I agree with tanstaafl. Harsh Mistress is his best. But I’m surprised there isn’t a rebuttal from those who prefer Podkane of Mars (repressed shudder)
What I’d like to see is a calender that starts every month on Monday. So I would know what day of the week any date will fall on more easily.
Also I’d like to see the Sunday/Monday start of the week resolved.(in favor of Monday, obviously)
Sorry - this doesn’t really speak to the OP, but that’s what I’m getting known for.
Does this bother posters terribly?
Just putting my 2sense in.
Tyranny,* like Hell*,* is not easily conquered*.
-Thomas Paine (fugitive slave catcher)
Well, there is what’s usually regarded as a fundamental time scale in physics… If you take G (the gravitational constant), hbar (Planck’s constant), and c (the speed of light), and toss them all into a hat and shake well*, you can get a time that’s called the Planck time, t_p = 5.39*10^-44 seconds… Not too useful, as a basis of a calender. Probably, any eventual “logical” time system that we come up with for, say, interplanetary spaceships will be based on the second, because that’s what most folks (physicists included) are most familiar with. More precisely, t_p = sqrt(Ghbar/c^5)
“There are only two things that are infinite: The Universe, and human stupidity-- and I’m not sure about the Universe”
–A. Einstein
BTW, on the hijack, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a good one, but I personally preferred The Door into Summer. I guess I’m just a sucker for saccharine happy endings.
“There are only two things that are infinite: The Universe, and human stupidity-- and I’m not sure about the Universe”
–A. Einstein
I plan on dipping into a hijack and steering it back on track. Here goes…
tanstaafl:
2sense:
chronos:
tanstaafl
I suppose that it is not surprising to find a bunch of Heinlein Fans in a Physics Thread on a GenKnowledge (Smart People) Message Board. So far we have a short list of Heinleinian Favorites:
[ul][li]Time Enough For Love[/li][li]The Moon is a Harsh Mistress[/li][li]The Door Into Summer[/ul][/li]and two not favorites:
[ul][li]Podkayne of Mars[/li][li]The Number of the Beast[/ul][/li]
I am not going to enter the debate here (let me just say that Time Enough for Love is, far and away, his best work)(oh, I guess I did enter, didn’t I? :cool
The way I plan on dragging this digression back to the OP is by pointing out, in TEFL, Heinlein’s characters make reference to two different calendars. One is the Gregorian and the other is…? I don’t remember. My dog-eared copy is at home and I am not.
Can anyone help out? I’m pretty sure that this other calendar is metric in nature - doesn’t it make sense that the Howard Families would use a logical, metric calendar?
Well, it’s not my favorite, but I like Podkayne of Mars. I also like The Door into Summer, although I’ll admit the pedophilic overtones are a little creepy now that I’m reading it as an adult. My personal favorites are Double Star, Glory Road and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
It seems that they settled on the second, as a unit of time, first. Then they took the length of a pendulum that took one second to swing from side to side as their basic length measure. That’s a meter. That’s why the acceleration of gravity is so close to 10m/s/s.
Unfortunately, that didn’t pull in enough grant money, so they decided to make the meter 1//40000000 of the circumference of the earth so they could request funds for expeditions to measure the circumference. (Actually, the strength of gravity changes too much from place to place, and the seconds pendulum might be too ambiguous. Not that the measurement of the circumference ain’t.)
I’m shocked that no one has suggested adopting stardates yet. Maybe it’s because they’re too flexible.
As I understand it, the Alabama Highway Dept. began posting km signage in the mid 90’s in compliance with a Federal directive, but were then informed that anothe rdirective prohibited the use of Federal monies to accomplish the directive while it was in some kind of enforcement limbo. BEcause they were in violation of the second directive, they were instructed to remove the signs amid complaints/fears that roadside assitantance requests would be confused by the two types of marker. So the crews have been out twice and the net effect is zilch.
It’s pretty easy to understand. If given the alternative between the familiar and the unfamiliar, however rational. People, myself often included, will stick with the familiar.
Now who’s up for talking Stardates as this thread gets sent on it’s 5-year mission to the the pit? (wait a minute… 5 YEAR mission?)
Have we forgotten that the second is already used as one of the fundamental units of the Metric system? Even the metre is defined as the distance light travels in 1/299792458 of a second. I agree a decimal time system would be useful, but is it so useful that it justifies redefining the entire Metric system?
Maybe, maybe not. I doubt it would fly on earth. I just thought it would be good geek fun to speculate on though. I’ve also learned about Swatch Time! I think I’ll get their watch.That way, when its 875 I’ll know it’s time for a lunch break :).
I can’t believe I am getting grief from posters for forgetting how to spell Podkane(sick).
You should all be in awe of my uncanny ability to wash such things from my memory.
I can’t believe you are leaving out Starship Troopers.
It is quite good. Particularly when read as a trilogy with Haldeman’s Forever War, and John Steakly’s Armor!
<end hijack>
I don’t know what this has to do with…
Oh my, look at the time.
Just putting my 2sense in.
Tyranny,* like Hell*,* is not easily conquered*.
-Thomas Paine (fugitive slave catcher)
And as long as we are talking about time, what about defining a second, or whatever you want to call the basic unit of time, as the average period between heart beats in human beings. To me that’s the most “natural” unit of time.
Along the same lines, I’d define temperature based on human body temperature. Instead of average body temperature being 98.6, it would be 100 degrees.
Does anybody know whether these ideas–heartbeat and temperature–in fact were the basic of our present scales, which they seem to roughly correlate with?
Tony
Two things fill my mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe: the starry skies above me and the moral law within me. – Kant
second (s or sec or ") [1]
the fundamental unit of time in all measuring systems. The name simply means that this unit is the second division of the hour, the minute being the first. The second was defined as 1/86 400 mean solar day until astronomers discovered that the mean solar day is actually not constant (see day). The definition was then changed to 1/86 400 of the mean solar day 1900 January 1. Since we can’t go back and measure that day any more, this wasn’t a real solution to the problem. In 1967, scientists agreed to define the second as that period of time which makes the frequency of a certain radiation emitted by atoms of cesium-133 equal to 9 192 631 770 hertz (cycles per second). In other words, if we really want to measure a second, we count 9 192 631 770 cycles of this radiation. This definition allows scientists to reconstruct the second anywhere in the world with equal precision.
