25 Jun 11
1 edit
Originally posted by MrksMonkeyWhat are they going to power it with? A spring? Is this clock designed to run unattended after it is finished? How do they manage to get one tick a year? If you take that literally, it won't be very accurate because the accuracy of a clock is tied pretty close to the frequency at which it ticks. There are special watches and clocks built that are pretty accurate, mechanical movements with special temperature compensated balance wheels and so forth, where you get say, two ticks per second.
Wow, if Armageddon doesn't stop time I think it'll last.
And isn't that guy making a spaceship too? He definitely has some expensive hobbies.
Then quartz watches came out with frequencies of around 30 kilohertz, more accurate yet if temperature compensated.
Then atomic clocks with the ticks measured in the gigahertz range, for instance the hydrogen ion clock comes in at 9.8 ghz which is accurate to one second in a million years.
Then the technology went into optical ticks, now they are terahertz level ticks with the best ones accurate to one second in several billion years.
So how do they propose to maintain any kind of accuracy with one tick per 8000 hours?
Here is another link to the story:
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/24/amazon-ceo-looks-to-tell-10000-years-of-time/
It says a different story, a tick every ten seconds. Don't know how he thinks ANY mechanical mechanism will be around for that long unattended.
Maybe he thinks it will always be visited by people who will clean it out once a week or something. Dust will kill this thing in a hundred years or less unattended.
25 Jun 11
1 edit
With little knowledge in the subject I had an idea atomic clocks with a magneto optical trap within a vacuum could virtually run infinitely. I admit that is a lot to ask of a mechanism.
I am also guessing that the whole point of this charade is not how often the clock ticks, but that it is storing the data accurately. How much leeway in microseconds does this kid have?
25 Jun 11
1 edit
Originally posted by MrksMonkeyTrust me, I worked on atomic clocks, I was on the Apollo project, Apollo timing and tracking. We used 3 clocks on each tracking station, when the Apollo would go out of sight of one station, it would be in sight of another. The job of the atomic clocks is to make sure the handoff of data from one tracking station to another is done in a certain time frame, in this case, one tenth of a microsecond was how close they had to be synced.
With little knowledge in the subject I had an idea atomic clocks with a magneto optical trap within a vacuum could virtually run infinitely. I admit that is a lot to ask of a mechanism.
I am also guessing that the whole point of this charade is not how often the clock ticks, but that it is storing the data accurately. How much leeway in microseconds does this kid have?
So we had a cesium beam atomic clock (not accurate by today's standards, only accurate to within one second in 2000 years), and a secondary clock, a Rubidium clock, which was maybe only one tenth as accurate as the cesium beam, and a temperature compensated quartz clock, less than half as accurate as the rubidium clock.
GPS satellites have atomic clocks onboard, otherwise relativity effects would make the GPS system only accurate to within about 4 miles, since that system works on accurately timing radio signals to track satellite movement and ground movement. For instance, some augmented GPS systems can measure movement of less than a foot. Since the speed of light is about 1 billion feet per second, you have to be able to time the radio signal to within one billionth of a second (one nanosecond) so you need really accurate clocks.
So getting back to the mechanical clock, even a tick of once per 10 second is not going to give me a warm fuzzy feeling about accuracy.
I think they are counting on continual maintenance. Rots o' ruck on that one🙂
25 Jun 11
Originally posted by MrksMonkeyBeen there, done that. Actually, the best of the best clocks now are being used to sniff out the most fundamental of physics, if constants like the 'fine structure constant' are really constant, can now be seriously addressed by the next gen clocks to be out in a year or so, clocks accurate to within one second in the entire age of the universe, over 13 billion years! Now THAT is accurate.
The dude should put his god forsaken clock on his spaceship so it can tell non relative space time for ever and ever and ever.
That'll get more attention.
