[LEAPSECS] What timekeeping system should the Terra Nova settlers use?

[Warner Losh]

On Oct 3, 2011, at 11:03 AM, Rob Seaman wrote:


> On Oct 3, 2011, at 9:20 AM, Warner Losh wrote:

> 

>> On Oct 3, 2011, at 8:15 AM, Rob Seaman wrote:

>>> I'm taken by your mention of Hertz as the unit of TAI.  That's an interesting way to break the artificial symmetry between the two meanings of the word "second".  Might be some play there.  The unit of atomic time is frequency, the unit of civil time is angles, fractions of a day.  Retire the unit of the "second" entirely.

>> 

>> Wouldn't that be imperial ounces vs US ounces all over again?

> 

> Volume is volume.  Time is many things.


Well, Yes and no.  US ounces can either be volume or weight.


>> It would also break the conversion from the frequency domain to the time domain and vice versa.

> 

> No, it would recognize that what we call time-of-day is an angle, and only approximately either frequency or time.  As has been said innumerable times, astronomers are power users of high precision timescales and appreciate the use of atomic time for frequency standards and precise time intervals.  This does not describe civil timekeeping.  (And that statement is not support for advocating being able to do any damn thing we want :-)


But it would throw a grande into all that pesky math you have to do with time. For Electrical Engineering, nobody cares about earth angles, but they do care that all seconds are the same length.  Astronomers have the luxury of being able to define time that's convenient for them, but that doesn't make it convenient for others.

And again, civil time is just an approximation of solar time of day. There are many ways to approximate this with differing degrees of luck.

Then again, if astronomers are such power users of time scales, why would they need to force everybody else to use something that's convenient for them and would cost them lots of cash to retool?  If they are so studly, shouldn't they have higher burdens than those less studly, and therefore less capable of handing the burdens :)


>> It is a quaint notion, but I don't think that dog would hunt.

> 

> I'll take a quaint dog.  One of the tenets of problem solving is not to shoot down ideas too early in the brainstorming phase.


True, but you also don't want to spend too much time on the lemons either.  Balance also dictates that you not waste time on losing ideas...

Warner