The standard by which the second was measured was changed but not the length of time which it represents. It's still pretty much the same amount of time, just put in terms which would allow precise measurement. Also the definition in terms of quantum state transitions couldn't occur until the 20th century while the metric system is from around 1790.
the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom.
There's a list of units about halfway down the page where you can see all the things that are defined in terms of seconds: hertz, newton, joule, pascal, coulomb, etc.
The base 60 numbering system goes back to (at least) Sumeria, which is most likely where the Babylonians got it from.
Changing to base 10 time would not be so easy, since many units in the metric system depend on the current definition of the second. I'm not sure why when the French created the metric system they didn't change the second too, but they didn't, and unless we want to change the whole metric system, the second will have to remain.
Of course, the U.S., which still hasn't adopted the metric system, could just make its own new measurement system with decimal time, and units based on that, and leapfrog from having the most obsolete system of measure in the world into the avant-garde.
I work at a lab with several professional inkjets, and these produce great prints with no lines after years of daily use. My $99 inkjet at home has lines after years of light use. Either a) you get what you pay for or b) using inkjets frequently keeps them working better. I think it's some of both.
Also, I agree with the comment a couple posts above about laser printers, the colors are all off in the laser prints, even on good laser photo paper. The graphics people in the lab won't use the color laser for anything, and even I can see a difference. Blues look purple, black looks like dark gray, etc.
Evolution is half faith too. A lot of the ToE is based on faith in the idea that life originated on Earth and could not have come from anywhere else. I think this is probably a vestige of religious based thinking ("the Earth is the center of the Universe" etc). Yes, we have a fossil record, but there are anomalies in the fossil record that present a challenge to the Darwinian Theory of Evolution. See the 1995 Time magazine cover story "When Life Exploded" by J. Madeline Nash.
http://www.ggl.ulaval.ca/personnel/bourque/s4/time .mag.life.explosion.html
(article at Time web site is now 'premium content')
Also, falls of living organisms from the sky support a possible alternative explanation for the origin of life. A common skeptic argument is that "this is because of tornado/weather phenomenon/etc" but this cannot address why the majority of cases involve only one or a very few species. Most natural environments picked up by some weather process would contain many species. Google falls of animals:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=falls+of+anim als+from+the+sky&btnG=Google+Search
Suppose we identified a planet around some distant star, with an Earthlike atmosphere etc, and we want to put some life there, in anticipation of a manned mission in the future, to allow our Earth species to terraform the planet for us. We don't have the ability to go there yet with people, because it would take too long. What we could do is take a lot of life forms from Earth that are small enough to freeze and thaw out again and still be alive and put them up in space in big balls of water, and then just "throw" them at the distant planet. They would stay very well frozen until they get there because space is so cold.
Yeah, it's science fiction. But so was the airplane or the automobile or space flight or any modern thing. Go check out Scientific American's 100 Years Ago section for some perspective.
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from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second
the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom.
See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SI
There's a list of units about halfway down the page where you can see all the things that are defined in terms of seconds: hertz, newton, joule, pascal, coulomb, etc.
The base 60 numbering system goes back to (at least) Sumeria, which is most likely where the Babylonians got it from. Changing to base 10 time would not be so easy, since many units in the metric system depend on the current definition of the second. I'm not sure why when the French created the metric system they didn't change the second too, but they didn't, and unless we want to change the whole metric system, the second will have to remain. Of course, the U.S., which still hasn't adopted the metric system, could just make its own new measurement system with decimal time, and units based on that, and leapfrog from having the most obsolete system of measure in the world into the avant-garde.
Also, I agree with the comment a couple posts above about laser printers, the colors are all off in the laser prints, even on good laser photo paper. The graphics people in the lab won't use the color laser for anything, and even I can see a difference. Blues look purple, black looks like dark gray, etc.
Also, falls of living organisms from the sky support a possible alternative explanation for the origin of life. A common skeptic argument is that "this is because of tornado/weather phenomenon/etc" but this cannot address why the majority of cases involve only one or a very few species. Most natural environments picked up by some weather process would contain many species. Google falls of animals: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=falls+of+anim als+from+the+sky&btnG=Google+Search
Suppose we identified a planet around some distant star, with an Earthlike atmosphere etc, and we want to put some life there, in anticipation of a manned mission in the future, to allow our Earth species to terraform the planet for us. We don't have the ability to go there yet with people, because it would take too long. What we could do is take a lot of life forms from Earth that are small enough to freeze and thaw out again and still be alive and put them up in space in big balls of water, and then just "throw" them at the distant planet. They would stay very well frozen until they get there because space is so cold.
Yeah, it's science fiction. But so was the airplane or the automobile or space flight or any modern thing. Go check out Scientific American's 100 Years Ago section for some perspective.