I don't think anyone is claiming that time is an abolute, because it clearly isn't. Nor is there much claim that time is a "thing." Time is an idea (just like width or height or depth) used to measure a difference between two conditions. As for leap years/seconds, that has nothing to do with time itself, but is an artifact of an inaccurate calendar system, change in the speed of the earth's rotation, and the inaccuracy of our measuring devices. For a while we had no leap seconds, they just changed the length of a second to match 1/86,400 of a day, but i think that stopped many years ago as atomic clocks were developed. It's unrelated to the notion of time itself, and is stricly a human convention.
If you think NASA is too concerned with PR and politics, having a commercial organization take their place is only going to make things worse. Business is all about PR and politics. At least NASA has thousands of talented people working for them, whereas this place would be lucky to get a half dozen.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think anyone is claiming that time is an abolute, because it clearly isn't. Nor is there much claim that time is a "thing." Time is an idea (just like width or height or depth) used to measure a difference between two conditions.
As for leap years/seconds, that has nothing to do with time itself, but is an artifact of an inaccurate calendar system, change in the speed of the earth's rotation, and the inaccuracy of our measuring devices. For a while we had no leap seconds, they just changed the length of a second to match 1/86,400 of a day, but i think that stopped many years ago as atomic clocks were developed. It's unrelated to the notion of time itself, and is stricly a human convention.
mew
If you think NASA is too concerned with PR and politics, having a commercial organization take their place is only going to make things worse. Business is all about PR and politics. At least NASA has thousands of talented people working for them, whereas this place would be lucky to get a half dozen.