Who is time for? What is time for? I don't mean these questions in a metaphysical sense, more 'for whom or what purpose do we measure time in minutes, days, etc?' The answer's easy: it's for us, you and me, so that we know that when it is four o'clock, in sixty minutes it will be five o'clock.
The reason I ask is that there is a lot of nonsense going on amongst the pointy heads in their universities and laboratories, the people who often seem quietly to rule our lives. They invented their own time, like a clock that never needs winding, and they measure it against the decay of a radioactive substance called caesium.
Now, what the little cleverheads hadn't taken into account is that the rotation of the earth is slowing: only very gradually but it is grinding to a halt. But caesium, in its own sweet way, decays at exactly the same rate all the time. So pointy head time tended to get ahead of yours and my time.
They got around this by adjusting it, every so often adding in an extra second. In fact their adjustment is usually made every 500 days or so.
But now they don't want to bother adjusting it any more: they will tell us what the time is, and it's caesium time, and that's that.
The problem is that after a little over 80 years, when today's children are coming to the end of their lives, we'll be a minute out. And after years and years it will be daylight in the middle of the night. But what I'm trying to say is that this time business is ours, not theirs. If they want to measure time accurately they should find some material, let's call it Timium, which decays at the right rate.
And leave us alone.
No comments:
Post a Comment