January 01, 2009
Celebrating Revolution
The people who control the precise measurement of time added a second to 2008. It's called a leap second. They do this periodically to make sure that the extremely precise time of their atomic clocks is synced to the less precise time of the planet's rotation and revolution. Which of course begs the question of what is the point of having "precise" atomic clocks that need periodic adjustment.
When I read that I stopped for a moment and wondered "What is time?"
After a two minutes of trying to wrap my brain around that I took two Advil for the headache and dropped the thought.
There are two measurements of time that make some sense. There is the interval in which the Earth makes one complete trip around the sun which for lack of a better word we call a year.
Then there is the interval it takes for the planet to make one complete rotation. We call this a day. Not really the best word I think since a day includes not only a day but also a night.
These measures of time are based on concrete measurable events. After that, however, it all seems rather arbitrary.
Each day is broken up into 24 units we call hours. Why 24? Since the Earth rotates through 360 degrees why not 36 hours? One hour for every ten degrees of rotation. Each of those 36 hours could still be divided nicely into 60 minutes. Each of those could still be divided into 60 seconds. The whole measurement of the day would be nicely tied to the rotation of the planet.
Of course we would all be working 12 hour days (except in France).
We seem to be obsessed with celebrating the passage of time. Once a year we celebrate the fact that the Earth made it around the sun and we managed to survive the trip. We call this a birthday.
If married we celebrate the fact that our union has survived one more celestial round trip.
And then on the day that we determined to be the first one of the year (wouldn't we be embarrassed if science later proved that what we thought was day one was actually day 247) we celebrate the revolution again.
As the saying goes, "It beats the alternative."
Viva La Revolution.
When I read that I stopped for a moment and wondered "What is time?"
After a two minutes of trying to wrap my brain around that I took two Advil for the headache and dropped the thought.
There are two measurements of time that make some sense. There is the interval in which the Earth makes one complete trip around the sun which for lack of a better word we call a year.
Then there is the interval it takes for the planet to make one complete rotation. We call this a day. Not really the best word I think since a day includes not only a day but also a night.
These measures of time are based on concrete measurable events. After that, however, it all seems rather arbitrary.
Each day is broken up into 24 units we call hours. Why 24? Since the Earth rotates through 360 degrees why not 36 hours? One hour for every ten degrees of rotation. Each of those 36 hours could still be divided nicely into 60 minutes. Each of those could still be divided into 60 seconds. The whole measurement of the day would be nicely tied to the rotation of the planet.
Of course we would all be working 12 hour days (except in France).
We seem to be obsessed with celebrating the passage of time. Once a year we celebrate the fact that the Earth made it around the sun and we managed to survive the trip. We call this a birthday.
If married we celebrate the fact that our union has survived one more celestial round trip.
And then on the day that we determined to be the first one of the year (wouldn't we be embarrassed if science later proved that what we thought was day one was actually day 247) we celebrate the revolution again.
As the saying goes, "It beats the alternative."
Viva La Revolution.
Posted by: Stephen Macklin at 11:54 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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