Slashdot Mirror
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."
I betcha it breaks 6 months after the warranty expires.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
This modern-day Stonehenge will be scavenged for parts and resources long before 10,000 years. Much like how the original Stonehenge was.
Trolling is a art,
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.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
For the clock, or for the human race?
Oh no... it's the future.
Sometimes the term 'computer' does not literally mean the electronic thing plugged into the wall under your desk running Linux.
Help fight poverty: Punch a poor person.
As opposed to a non-binary computer?
Yes
Oh no... it's the future.
Neal Stephenson's novel Anathem was inspired by the work and philosophy of the Long Now Foundation.
In brief: The narrator and many of the characters are members of a scholarly order which separates itself from the distractions of the outside world. Their monk-like existence is bound by many rules and rituals. Many of these center around the "winding" and tending of an immense clock.
Not a book for everyone, but I found it entertaining and intriguing.
This mechanical clock was completed 54 years ago. It has a 25,753 year cycle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jens_Olsen's_World_Clock
(And it had to be completely renovated after 40 years...)
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.
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
IIRC, from the 2005 article: it will be built as far from civilization as possible so "that will help people forget about it and avoid the contempt of familiarity."
THE WORLD IS GOING TO END IN 12009
THE AMERICANS PREDICTED IT
Try reading TFA:
Due to the elliptical orbit of Earth, variations in the absolute time kept by the pendulum and solar time can vary by as much as +/- 15 minutes each year. The Equation of Time Cam measures the difference in these two times and recalibrates the clock, while also correcting for the Earth's axis wobble and 1 second per century decrease in speed.
...
Sunlight striking a wire will allow this solar synchronizer to make minute adjustments and realign the clock's absolute time pendulum with true solar time.
> someone's going to look foolish in a few thousand years when their clock is off.
That's wrong at so many levels, but I'll just say that it's better to miss a few seconds over 10,000 years than to miss your life by doing nothing with it.
Also, yes.
The Tower of the Winds, the public mechanical calendar/sundial in the old Roman agora in ancient Athens, was probably not more than a few hundred years old before it was stripped for parts, looted, and converted into the bell tower for a former Byzantine Christian church. If history is anything to go by, then this mechanism will also be broken up and destroyed long before 10,000 years have passed.
Perhaps if more people stopped to consider the future that far in advance, our odds would improve. And perhaps the mere existence of such a clock would encourage a few to do so.
Anyone else wonder if, just a mere two thousand years from now, some future country will discover this and wonder what it is?
Just look at the Antikythera Machine.
In 10000 years after humans are long dead and gone and it has finally wound down its readout will show simply "42".
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
Perhaps if more people stopped to consider the future that far in advance, our odds would improve. And perhaps the mere existence of such a clock would encourage a few to do so.
Ah that's crazy. Any year now, the Yellowstone supervolcano is going to blow, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it. The world will be plunged into a dark ice ages, and that will be the end of us.
This is my sig.
For example, the Mayan clock has a digit rollover in December of 2012, and that kind of forward thinking has allowed the Mayans to become one of the dominant cultures in the Western... oh, wait.
We have been fooled ! This will last only 16 years !
And I understand binary !
--
There are 10 types of people in the world : Those who understand binary, and those who don't...
This is not true. It's just that the working class consumers want a low price before anything else.
In an "open" market and a class based society, quality will deteriorate to the lowest the consumers are willing to tolerate, because that maximises profits for the seller.
That's what Karl Marx discussed and why he rejected consumerism, decades before consumerism was rediscovered and embraced by the conservatives.
They'll probably find it an go; "oh my how did those primitive people two thousand years ago build this?!? They can not possible have been smart enough to figure it out on their own; it must have been aliens!"
The Long Now Foundation
Oh please, they're going to tear it down in 50 years because they need space for another parking lot.
Buttons aren't toys.
"They could probably take care of that by etching a description in multiple languages in epoxy. And who knows, in the future, it may turn out to be useful as a sort of Rosetta stone."
That's another Long Now project:
Project Rosetta
What's six times nine?
54
The Mayan clock does not have a digit rollover then. Their calendar system can run until the year forty octillion without modification. The previous, uninhabited iteration of the world in Mayan mythology was destroyed by the Gods after its 13th baktun, and our own world's 13th baktun ends in 2012. The Mayans were quite comfortable with the idea of a 14th baktun though.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Children, the ancient Nevadans were a race of people known for their great engineering skills and their faith in the God Roulette, a god that they believed would judge people, punishing them or rewarding them. It is said that with a wave of the hand, the King of the Nevadans could cause a great temple to crash to the ground and then raise a new one up that very day.
The Nevadan culture built this clock, it will run out in 3 years. They were known for their prophecy. They must have known something we don't. The world will end in the year 12,012. This is off course, a significant number...
Taken from a lecture at the Art Bell Elementary School in the year 12,009.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.