[time-nuts] UTC and leap seconds

[Jim Palfreyman]

Don't forget pulsars in this. Some of them rival atomic clocks and
they are a long way away and still line up nicely with our hydrogen
masers synchronized to caesium standards.

Jim Palfreyman

On Saturday, June 12, 2010, Mike S <mikes at flatsurface.com> wrote:
> At 10:46 AM 6/11/2010, iovane at inwind.it wrote...
>
> (Speculative hint: We accept that the universe is expanding. Might this affect
> the fine structure of matter, including cesium atoms? Is there any adverse
> proof? What is easier to think? a) the expansion of the universe doesn't affect
> at all the properties of matter. b) it might.).
>
>
> If the expansion affected everything, how would we know? Are you claiming that it affects different things differently? Why? (if it affects all things equally, then both the earth and clocks would slow/speed the same, and we wouldn't observe the earth slowing down)
>
> The universe, as a whole, is expanding. The matter and objects within it are not (generally - some things like my beer belly are, but that's unrelated to universal expansion). The result is objects, on an universal scale, stay the same size but get farther apart. To your point (expansion affecting small structure), why would expansion take effect at very large scales, and very small scales, but not at the scales in between?
>
> But, relativity (not just Einstein's form) can apply everywhere. One can create complex math/physics which allows the Earth to be at the center of the universe, with everything else revolving (in very complex orbits) around it. Having done so, no one can "prove" that it's not true. But, that's not what most people accept as "fact," because it is FAR from the simplest explanation of what we observe. So, if you want to believe that clocks speed up, and the earth's rotation remains constant, you can. But don't expect others to accept that.
>
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