Work Progresses On 10,000 Year Clock 307
KindMind writes "CNet has pictures of a planned 10,000 year clock to be built in eastern Nevada by the Long Now Foundation. From the article: 'Running under its own power, the clock is an experiment in art, science, and engineering. The six dials on the face of this machine will represent the year, century, horizons, sun position, lunar phase, and the stars of the night sky over a 10,000-year period. Likely to span multiple generations and evolutions in culture, the thinking and design put into the monument makes it a moving sculpture as beautiful as it is complex.' This was reviewed on Slashdot in 2005. Really cool pictures, including one of a mechanical 'binary computer' that converts the pendulum into positions on the dial."
Re:Errr (Score:5, Informative)
As opposed to a non-binary computer?
Yes [wikipedia.org]
Inspiration for "Anathem" (Score:5, Informative)
Neal Stephenson's novel Anathem was inspired by the work and philosophy of the Long Now Foundation.
In brief: The narrator and many of the characters are members of a scholarly order which separates itself from the distractions of the outside world. Their monk-like existence is bound by many rules and rituals. Many of these center around the "winding" and tending of an immense clock.
Not a book for everyone, but I found it entertaining and intriguing.
A 54 years old 25,753 year mechanical clock exists (Score:5, Informative)
This mechanical clock was completed 54 years ago. It has a 25,753 year cycle.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jens_Olsen's_World_Clock [wikipedia.org]
(And it had to be completely renovated after 40 years...)
Re:Wow... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How about a non-powered clock? (Score:4, Informative)
Tower of the Winds is not 10,000 years old (Score:5, Informative)
Re:ha ha ha (Score:5, Informative)
That's why one of the design considerations is avoiding valuable materials. This is nontrivial -- materials with good corrosion and wear resistance tend to be pricey. Obviously the clock won't be made of anything as low value as stone, but it is a consideration.
It's a big problem: build something pretty, and it becomes an object of desire, even to have a small part, and people will take. Build something that will last a long time, and it needs to be resistant to weathering, and therefore valuable, and people will take. Build something that has a function, it will be a source of political power to control it, and people who do not control it will try to destroy it. The engineering is only one part of the problem.
The other thing I worry about is that the design tolerances are going to be difficult to maintain. Anything that will last 10,000 years will experience seismic activity, no matter where you put it. Few large structures can withstand being shaken while retaining high tolerances. I've spent a fair bit of my youth around buildings that were only 2500-3000 years old (in Greece), and by and large, they were not in very good condition, even when not scavanged for building materials. We do not understand how to build structures to resist corrosion and weathering on millenial time scales -- that does not mean we shouldn't try, just that we aren't good at it, yet.
Re:Errr (Score:2, Informative)
Re:ha ha ha (Score:4, Informative)
We *didn't* understand that thousands of years ago. Today we have much better materials. Nickel, for instance, is much harder and more resistant to corrosion than the bronze that was used in ancient Greece. Marble and sandstone will show significant wear in a few decades if used in stairsteps, no wonder those old buildings are so worn out.
Re:Building things to last.... (Score:4, Informative)
This is not true. It's just that the working class consumers want a low price before anything else.
In an "open" market and a class based society, quality will deteriorate to the lowest the consumers are willing to tolerate, because that maximises profits for the seller.
That's what Karl Marx discussed and why he rejected consumerism, decades before consumerism was rediscovered and embraced by the conservatives.
Re:ha ha ha (Score:2, Informative)
One of the conscious goals [longnow.org] is to make it from cheap, plentiful, or otherwise unattractive-to-thieves materials.
Re:ha ha ha (Score:5, Informative)
We *didn't* understand that thousands of years ago. Today we have much better materials. Nickel, for instance, is much harder and more resistant to corrosion than the bronze that was used in ancient Greece. Marble and sandstone will show significant wear in a few decades if used in stairsteps, no wonder those old buildings are so worn out.
You're proposing to build stairs out of nickel? The Ancient Greeks were actually really good architects and civil engineers. Quite very good, if you take the time to study their techniques. There are buildings that are largely intact and have not moved, one stone relative to another, more than 1cm or so, over 3000 years (the Mycenean behive tombs), but they are rare among the buildings that still remain. These are just the buildings, I'm talking about, walls, floor, sometimes roofs. Forget complicated, moving mechanisms.
We are currently building few, if any, structures that are intended to last at the century scale. Most built form is intended to last at the decadal scale. We utterly lack expertise at the millennial scale -- although, as stated above, that does not mean we should not TRY. Just that it's hard.
And I'm not convinced at all that we have superior materials now than we did 2000 years ago for this purpose. Steel? Won't last. Stainless alloys? Corrosion still builds up over long time scales, and it's too valuable. Nickel? Valuable. Aluminum alloys? Still corrode. Valuable. Etc.
The only materials that won't oxidize at those time scales are those that are already oxidized. SiO2 (quartz, glass). CaCO3 (marble). FeOx (oxidized iron, but it's structurally worthless).
Re:10,000 years (Score:3, Informative)
"They could probably take care of that by etching a description in multiple languages in epoxy. And who knows, in the future, it may turn out to be useful as a sort of Rosetta stone."
That's another Long Now project:
Project Rosetta [rosettaproject.org]
Re:10,000 years (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Inspiration for "Anathem" (Score:3, Informative)
It was Randall Munroe [xkcd.com] who said it — and look at what his mouseover text says.
Re:How about a non-powered clock? (Score:3, Informative)
We don't know how to build a reference mass [wikipedia.org] that is accurate to even 10 ppm over a century. You're asking for a mass that is accurate to (about) 0.05 ppm over 100 centuries if you want the clock to be accurate to a single day at the end of those 100 centuries. Furthermore, you want it to be built not from a high-stability noble metal alloy, but from a radioactive, reactive gas. And you want to maintain this stability without even doing the best job you know how of isolating it from its environment, but instead to have it communicate in a defined manner.
In short, I think radioactive decay is a problematic method of measuring time -- even for less chemically active isotopes and non-mass-based measurement techniques.
Re:Leap Seconds (Score:2, Informative)
Don't get me wrong; solar drift is an issue, but it's just not changing the year as quickly as you might think. As far as the cause, some think it is because the earth's rotation about its axis is slowing. This makes sense when you take into account: 1) the Moon's gravitational drag and associated tides; 2) that Earth is getting heavier (est. 400 tons of meteors land every year).