[time-nuts] Absolute time (was Time of death-Again)

Bill Hawkins bill at iaxs.net
Thu Oct 28 15:33:35 UTC 2010


If a far future observer was to make any sense of a date, quite
a lot would have to be known about the culture, including how to
read its markings.

It would be impractical to carve a map of the sky showing the
location of a stellar beacon on each tombstone, and then adding
some number of rotations of the Earth around the sun to it. How
would you describe leap seconds? Or seconds?

The use of BC and AD pervades our culture. What's needed is a
Rosetta Stone that has a lengthy description of the relation of
astronomical events to the year 0, after first describing the
time system (Y, M, D, H, M, S). Perhaps radioactive dating by
isotope ratios would be easier than describing years, using a
stellar event to pin down the base ratio to absolute time.

Any understanding of a culture includes an understanding of its
religions. Perhaps the Mayan calendar would be discovered first.
Too bad it stops in December 2012.

Bill Hawkins


-----Original Message-----
From: Raj
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2010 9:17 AM
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Time of death-Again

T=0 could be a recent supernova for a secular short measurement span
considering the life span of Earth.
OR
T=0 could also be a local solar system event that is easily determinable on
Earth. 

For someone measuring events on Earth a million years from now, give or take
a ppm :-) or they may not care!

>I think this is a sort of relativity question, isn't it?  That is, you just
have to pick some place/time, and reference everything else to that.  So
which astronomical event do you want use as your reference (e.g. a T=0
epoch)and is it sufficiently well determined that you can figure it out
later?  It's all well and good, for instance, to use noon on January 1st,
1900 or something as your time zero, but that's hardly a universally
available reference point.

-- 
Raj, VU2ZAP
Bangalore, India. 





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