this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2024
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Technology

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[–] themeatbridge@lemmy.world 125 points 1 year ago (4 children)

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

[–] lauha@lemmy.one 46 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] Vigge93@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

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

[–] Cosmos7349@lemmy.world 33 points 1 year 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 1 year ago (1 children)

The Germans will be furious

[–] kambusha@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago
[–] iAvicenna@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Oh shit I missed the sun explosion!

[–] Damage@feddit.it 48 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone 29 points 1 year ago

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

[–] pelletbucket@lemm.ee 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] jeffw@lemmy.world 42 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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 1 year ago

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

[–] nokturne213@sopuli.xyz 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] fredrik@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] RizzRustbolt@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

But the groundhog will be made out of gallium arsenide.

[–] AmidFuror@fedia.io 4 points 1 year ago

Hopefully they will improve with the next model.

[–] Mouselemming@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

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

[–] solrize@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] corroded@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] MonkderDritte@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)
[–] xenoclast@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Oh duh, yeah. The most obvious example.

[–] anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 year ago

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

[–] Sparkega@sh.itjust.works -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)
[–] xthexder@l.sw0.com 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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 1 year ago

"I suppose".

Boom, now it's a scientific unit.