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

Brooke Clarke brooke95482 at att.net
Thu Oct 28 16:47:06 UTC 2010


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





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