[time-nuts] The forbidden question

[Ben Bradley]

This thread reminds me of a few things, firstly, nuclear fusion:

On Wed, Jun 5, 2019 at 1:00 AM jimlux <jimlux at earthlink.net> wrote:
>

> 30 odd years ago, I heard a speech from a guy at AT&T who said that by
> definition, you cannot predict technology that will result in a
> revolution ahead of time.

>The cost of a voice
> channel in an optical fiber was literally "too cheap to meter".

The Big Prediction 50 or 60 years ago was that commercial fusion power
was only 10 or at most 20 years away, and that electricity would be
"too cheap to meter" (though this ignores the amortized cost of
building and maintaining the electric power transmission grid,
something like 10 percent of electricity cost). This prediction has
basically stayed the same (especially that commercial fusion is "only
10 years away") right up to the present. This is the flip side of
electric motors becoming ubiquitous, again showing how hard prediction
can be.

Of all the universal constants (and related values such as time and
frequency), the gravitational constant is the one known to the least
accuracy, to only about 5 significant digits. If one is looking to
'jump ship' from their precision time studies, maybe they could
collect some of those old-fashioned obsolete kilogram standards and
make a really good Cavendish type experiment. Seriously, you'd only
need readily available Class M1 or Class M2 weights (and of course
some serious experimental methods) to measure G to near the currently
known accuracy. Here are two recent popular articles on measuring G,
both linking to the same Nature article:
https://phys.org/news/2018-08-ways-gravitational-constant.html
https://physicsworld.com/a/gravitational-constant-mystery-deepens-with-new-precision-measurements/