[time-nuts] Absolute time (was Time of death-Again)

[Jean-Louis Oneto]

Hi group,
The most absolute remarkable event in our _Universe_ is the Big Bang, and it 
seems to be pretty well defined in time. It's rather sad that we're unable 
to relate this event to our usual timescales (with a better precision than 
several 10^9 years...!)
That would make a nice "absolute zero" for time, at least in our tiny 
universe.
Jean-Louis
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Brooke Clarke" <brooke95482 at att.net>
To: "Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement" 
<time-nuts at febo.com>
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2010 4:47 PM
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Absolute time (was Time of death-Again)


> Hi Bill:
>
> The Mayan calendar does not stop in 2012, only the short hand year 
> notation.
> It's just like when our calendar stopped at 12/31/99, i.e the next year 
> was ZERO (aka Y2K)!
> See:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayan_calender
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_phenomenon
>
> Have Fun,
>
> Brooke Clarke
> http://www.PRC68.com
>
>
> Bill Hawkins wrote:
>> If a far future observer was to make any sense of a date, quite
>> a lot would have to be known about the culture, including how to
>> read its markings.
>>
>> It would be impractical to carve a map of the sky showing the
>> location of a stellar beacon on each tombstone, and then adding
>> some number of rotations of the Earth around the sun to it. How
>> would you describe leap seconds? Or seconds?
>>
>> The use of BC and AD pervades our culture. What's needed is a
>> Rosetta Stone that has a lengthy description of the relation of
>> astronomical events to the year 0, after first describing the
>> time system (Y, M, D, H, M, S). Perhaps radioactive dating by
>> isotope ratios would be easier than describing years, using a
>> stellar event to pin down the base ratio to absolute time.
>>
>> Any understanding of a culture includes an understanding of its
>> religions. Perhaps the Mayan calendar would be discovered first.
>> Too bad it stops in December 2012.
>>
>> Bill Hawkins
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Raj
>> Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2010 9:17 AM
>> To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
>> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Time of death-Again
>>
>> T=0 could be a recent supernova for a secular short measurement span
>> considering the life span of Earth.
>> OR
>> T=0 could also be a local solar system event that is easily determinable 
>> on
>> Earth.
>>
>> For someone measuring events on Earth a million years from now, give or 
>> take
>> a ppm :-) or they may not care!
>>
>>
>>> I think this is a sort of relativity question, isn't it?  That is, you 
>>> just
>>>
>> have to pick some place/time, and reference everything else to that.  So
>> which astronomical event do you want use as your reference (e.g. a T=0
>> epoch)and is it sufficiently well determined that you can figure it out
>> later?  It's all well and good, for instance, to use noon on January 1st,
>> 1900 or something as your time zero, but that's hardly a universally
>> available reference point.
>>
>>
>
> -- 
> Have Fun,
>
> Brooke Clarke
> http://www.PRC68.com
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts at febo.com
> To unsubscribe, go to 
> https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
> and follow the instructions there.