Work Progresses On 10,000 Year Clock

KindMind writes "CNet has pictures of a planned 10,000 year clock to be built in eastern Nevada by the Long Now Foundation. From the article: 'Running under its own power, the clock is an experiment in art, science, and engineering. The six dials on the face of this machine will represent the year, century, horizons, sun position, lunar phase, and the stars of the night sky over a 10,000-year period. Likely to span multiple generations and evolutions in culture, the thinking and design put into the monument makes it a moving sculpture as beautiful as it is complex.' This was reviewed on Slashdot in 2005. Really cool pictures, including one of a mechanical 'binary computer' that converts the pendulum into positions on the dial."

Comments

ha ha ha

[grub]

This modern-day Stonehenge will be scavenged for parts and resources long before 10,000 years. Much like how the original Stonehenge was.

Re:ha ha ha

[Hurricane78]

There is a great solution to this: Just make it totally deadly radioactive for the next 10,000 years. ^^
If it were me, who had to build it, I would do exactly that. I would make the only way to look at it, to use binoculars. With a large deadly zone around it. I would make it so radioactive, that it would glow in the night, for the first 1000 years or so. I would make it a legend. Something that is above religion. Above governments. Something that the two sides of the biggest war in those 10,000 years will value so much that they could never destroy it. And the radioactivity would keep more primitive thieves off of it.

How about a non-powered clock?

[davidwr]

How about a non-powered clock that used the positions of the sun, moon, and stars to tell the time?

We already have a version? that works for about half a day in most parts of the world, and 24 hours during the summers near the poles.

Another option:
A clock that simply reads the remaining amount of radioactive material in a sample. Use the radiation to drive the device.

Re:10,000 years

[Tx]

For the clock, or for the human race?

The End is Near

[travdaddy]

Just think, if this thing really works, then we've created another day where everyone will stockpile cans of food and hides in the cellar! "The Ancient Americans knew this clock would only need to be accurate for 3.65 million days!"

If you doubt that will happen, take a good look at the Mayan calendar.

Re:Errr

[whizzard]

As opposed to a non-binary computer?

Also, yes.

Re:12009

[Chris Burke]

Lol, yeah, I can even see that happening.

Plus, if I understand the device, then it's powered by a couple huge weights slowly falling down a screw. Whatever future society encounters it may not fully understand it, and based on the "Doomsday myth" might assume something is supposed to happen when the weights reach the bottom. There'll be a whole society of people who want to find out, and on that auspicious day they'll travel up to the mountain and have a big party and sit around speculating what'll happen. Will a secret passage open up containing the wisdom of the ancients? Will the whole thing collapse as if mimicking the destruction that will soon engulf the world? Then the moment finally comes, the bells sound one final time, the weights settle at the bottom of the machine... and it stops moving. That's it. They wait around for a while, but still nothing happens. They all leave, and one is heard to mutter "Whoever these Society of the Long Now people were, they're a bunch of jerks."