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."
Ten thousand year waranty (Score:5, Funny)
I betcha it breaks 6 months after the warranty expires.
Re:Ten thousand year waranty (Score:4, Funny)
I betcha it breaks 6 months after the warranty expires.
No worries, you would have lost the receipt!
The solution is clear (Score:2)
Just give it a warranty period of of 119,996 months and it should be good to go.
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Again, we're talkin' Best Buy here. The basic warranty is 90 days. The extended warranty for the rest of the 10,000 years cost $OMGTHATSALOTOFMONEY.
And they won't sell you the clock without the warranty. "Nope, sorry, fresh out, we got a really small allocation from the distribution center. I think you passed the guy who bought the last one walking out of the store as you were walking in. Check at the other store (20 miles) across town. Kthxbye."
Re:Ten thousand year waranty (Score:5, Funny)
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Who the hell would go through the trouble of gold plating and diamond encrusting a monsters balls? sheesh, there are some bored motherf****rs out there...
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ha ha ha (Score:5, Interesting)
This modern-day Stonehenge will be scavenged for parts and resources long before 10,000 years. Much like how the original Stonehenge was.
Re:ha ha ha (Score:4, Interesting)
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Except stone isn't low value - otherwise Stonehenge, the Pyramids, and many lesser known buildings wouldn't have been scavenged over the centuries. Even today, with stone not being a primary building material, it is still valued for decoration and used as a component in concrete.
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Stone is low-value. We use it only in certain building applications and low-value decoration and we have lots of it and know where to find lots more. The only reason ancient buildings were scavenged is because stone was the primary building material during those times.
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They had lots of stone and knew where to get more back then too... The reason ancient buildings were scavenged was because the stone was already cut to a manageable size, and was generally handily located.
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: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: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).
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What about this mechanism [wikipedia.org]? If it had been built of modern corrosion-resistant alloys it would still be working today.
Iron meteorites are a natural stainless steel and last millions of years. Although iron meteorites are only about 6% of the total that fall on earth, about 90% of collected meteorites are iron, they ar
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Here's one [meteorlab.com] that has been dated to a fall on earth 110 million years ago. It's corroded, not much of the original mass remains, it's true, but it's something like four orders of magnitude older than any known bronze artifact.
You know, "stainless" is a name applied to thousands of different alloys. And
Ship's propellers (Score:3, Interesting)
Exegi monumentum aere perennius, wrote Horace, but with modern bronze al
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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.
the humorous part about trying is we won't see if we succeed. It'll be our descendants' building on our designs and even then they won't know....
What I would like to see is more community type of buildings. If I was running a country, I'd plan for the long term. Monuments are nice, but I'd like to see some disaster relief buil
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Re:ha ha ha (Score:5, Insightful)
If they form a monastery around the clock it may survive. The monastery need not be religious, it just needs people who are willing to carry on the original vision. I'd bet there are enough people who would be willing to donate a year, or more, of their lives to maintaining something that was designed to last 10,000 years. A sort of "carrying the flame" kind of altruism. The monastery would be devoted to seeing that we don't forget how to manufacture things and as part of its mission, it could be continually rebuilding the clock. The Japanese have some Shinto temples they've routinely destroyed and rebuilt every 20 years. [japan-guide.com]
Re:ha ha ha (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a great solution to this: Just make it totally deadly radioactive for the next 10,000 years. ^^
If it were me, who had to build it, I would do exactly that. I would make the only way to look at it, to use binoculars. With a large deadly zone around it. I would make it so radioactive, that it would glow in the night, for the first 1000 years or so. I would make it a legend. Something that is above religion. Above governments. Something that the two sides of the biggest war in those 10,000 years will value so much that they could never destroy it. And the radioactivity would keep more primitive thieves off of it.
How about a non-powered clock? (Score:4, Interesting)
How about a non-powered clock that used the positions of the sun, moon, and stars to tell the time?
We already have a version [wikipedia.org]? that works for about half a day in most parts of the world, and 24 hours during the summers near the poles.
Another option:
A clock that simply reads the remaining amount of radioactive material in a sample. Use the radiation to drive the device.
Re:How about a non-powered clock? (Score:4, Informative)
Predictability (Score:2, Insightful)
If you can predict the unique patterns of shadows or light on any cloudless day or night in the future, you can make a calendar and clock that will work on that day.
In the worst case, you chisel astronomical tables into stone tablets then leave long-life measuring instruments behind. At that point, "what's the date and time" becomes "measure and look it up in the table."
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Reading the amount of radioactivity in a sample to a precision of even 1 day in 3.6 million is nontrivial. Doing it with a device that will survive 3.6 million days while being exposed to said radiation is even more so.
Building a clock that lasts 3.6 million days is not a project for a single day, let alone the five minutes spent on a slashdot comment.
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36-Chlorine has a half-life of 30 000 years, decaying into either stable Sulfur-36 or Argon-36. Since the ratio of decay events that result in Argon-36 is kno
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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 i
Kind of useless pictures... (Score:2)
You'd think I would appreciate lots of close-up pictures of dissociated machine parts, but today, not so much. Must be taxes, but that gallery just looks like a lot of meaningless gears.
Even pictures need context.
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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.
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Anathem was fantastic - it's my new favorite Neal Stephenson book. His best work yet.
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It was Randall Munroe [xkcd.com] who said it — and look at what his mouseover text says.
Non-moving clock (Score:2)
The motion of galaxies/superclusters/filaments [wikipedia.org] is pretty steady, why not just record the current positions many of them, and note when each observation was taken? Even if a small number of superclusters collide, most are likely to still be intact after millions of years, and this would require no moving parts.
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The point of this clock isn't the accurate keeping of time, rather it is to create dreams for the living, of a time long after their own death.
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...)
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I was under the impression that the Long Now's clock is intended to be a lasting monument, so durability and minimized maintenanced needs are likley a core design requirement -- in addition to technical accuracy.
The End is Near (Score:5, Interesting)
If you doubt that will happen, take a good look at the Mayan calendar.
12009 (Score:5, Funny)
THE WORLD IS GOING TO END IN 12009
THE AMERICANS PREDICTED IT
Re:12009 (Score:5, Interesting)
Lol, yeah, I can even see that happening.
Plus, if I understand the device, then it's powered by a couple huge weights slowly falling down a screw. Whatever future society encounters it may not fully understand it, and based on the "Doomsday myth" might assume something is supposed to happen when the weights reach the bottom. There'll be a whole society of people who want to find out, and on that auspicious day they'll travel up to the mountain and have a big party and sit around speculating what'll happen. Will a secret passage open up containing the wisdom of the ancients? Will the whole thing collapse as if mimicking the destruction that will soon engulf the world? Then the moment finally comes, the bells sound one final time, the weights settle at the bottom of the machine... and it stops moving. That's it. They wait around for a while, but still nothing happens. They all leave, and one is heard to mutter "Whoever these Society of the Long Now people were, they're a bunch of jerks."
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So we need to design it so that a door opens and a sign pops out saying some form of "Ha!"
Perpetual motion (Score:2, Interesting)
Running under its own power
Perpetual motion ?
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It has weights that descend over the course of a century, and will need to be wound every century. The point was to have an independent, purely mechanical power source that could run for 10,000 years as long as someone just bothers to reset the weights. No chemicals to run out, no dependency on an outside power source to keep functioning.
Tower of the Winds is not 10,000 years old (Score:5, Informative)
10,191 (Score:2)
I can't wait for the year 10,191 lots of cool stuff will start happening around then.
not future-proof. (Score:2)
10000 binary years ? (Score:3, Funny)
And I understand binary !
--
There are 10 types of people in the world : Those who understand binary, and those who don't...
The 10,000 year clock (Score:2)
Because 10,000 years from now we're still going to be using the same calendar and time system.
Obligatory question (Score:2)
Only possible flaw is: (Score:3, Funny)
someone has to enter a code and press execute every 108 minutes.
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Yes: http://news.cnet.com/2300-11386_3-10000718-7.html?tag=mncol [cnet.com]
I can imagine this device looking like a magic number to engineers 9,000 years from now as they try to figure out how the thing works.
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The Mayan (Long Count) calendar doesn't end in 2012; OTOH, I suppose the idea that our concept of time ended at the end point of the 10,000 year clock's coverage would the kind of preliminary mistake as "the Mayan cale
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Re:Leap Seconds (Score:5, Insightful)
Try reading TFA:
Due to the elliptical orbit of Earth, variations in the absolute time kept by the pendulum and solar time can vary by as much as +/- 15 minutes each year. The Equation of Time Cam measures the difference in these two times and recalibrates the clock, while also correcting for the Earth's axis wobble and 1 second per century decrease in speed.
...
Sunlight striking a wire will allow this solar synchronizer to make minute adjustments and realign the clock's absolute time pendulum with true solar time.
> someone's going to look foolish in a few thousand years when their clock is off.
That's wrong at so many levels, but I'll just say that it's better to miss a few seconds over 10,000 years than to miss your life by doing nothing with it.
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The antikythera mechanism doesn't even turn anymore, but no one looks foolish for making it.
The real question is what does it say about us as a people that we would construct such a thing? That we are very conscious of our mortality? That we live in a time where a concept like the End of Civilization is taken seriously? (Note that this is very different from a belief in the apocalypse, and shows a certain development over the
Re:10,000 years (Score:5, Interesting)
For the clock, or for the human race?
Re:10,000 years (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:10,000 years (Score:4, Funny)
Perhaps if more people stopped to consider the future that far in advance, our odds would improve. And perhaps the mere existence of such a clock would encourage a few to do so.
Ah that's crazy. Any year now, the Yellowstone supervolcano is going to blow, and there's not a damn thing we can do about it. The world will be plunged into a dark ice ages, and that will be the end of us.
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The period between eruptions of the Yellowstone hotspot/caldera are on the order of hundreds of millions of years. You seem to be talking about a whole different order of pessimism.
This message brought to you by Vint Cerf, who didn't let the imminent Yellowstone catastrophe discourage his work on computer networks.
Re:10,000 years (Score:5, Funny)
For example, the Mayan clock has a digit rollover in December of 2012, and that kind of forward thinking has allowed the Mayans to become one of the dominant cultures in the Western... oh, wait.
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Re:10,000 years (Score:5, Informative)
The Ancient Nevadans (Score:5, Funny)
Children, the ancient Nevadans were a race of people known for their great engineering skills and their faith in the God Roulette, a god that they believed would judge people, punishing them or rewarding them. It is said that with a wave of the hand, the King of the Nevadans could cause a great temple to crash to the ground and then raise a new one up that very day.
The Nevadan culture built this clock, it will run out in 3 years. They were known for their prophecy. They must have known something we don't. The world will end in the year 12,012. This is off course, a significant number...
Taken from a lecture at the Art Bell Elementary School in the year 12,009.
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And when (not if) this clock breaks down, what will that encourage us to do?
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> It has a note on the inside saying that it was last repaired in 1909.
And the last time that clock was reset to correct drift? That is another feature of this clock, it is supposed to be able to not only run for 10,000 years it is supposed to keep correct time for 10,000 without human intervention. That is an interesting goal.
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Now you just need to set it so that it's showing the right time when you want to wake up, then you'll be able to set the alarm and have it go off at the right time.
Oh wait...
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I have no idea why this comment was modded to "Insightful". What a waste of mod points. Funny, perhaps.
Considering the place where they are going to put this clock, it is going to be likely that in 50 years people will forget about its very existence or even know where to find the dang thing. It is going to be in eastern Nevada (U.S. state) near the top of a mountain. Hardly the best place for a parking lot for any reason.
About the only "famous" landmark of the area is the infamous "Area 51" that has be
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Re:10,000 years (Score:5, Funny)
Re:10,000 years (Score:4, Funny)
What's six times nine?
54
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They should leave a message that says "reset after 10,000 years" repeated in all known written languages.
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The Mayan calendar doesn't "run out" in 2012... it merely goes through the equivalent of what we have with the Y10k bug... when date recording will move on to another digit to count the number of years.
You just need another digit in the "long count" for the Mayan calendar to keep the system going for another couple of millennia.
I would have to assume (and based on how they use dates that the Long Now Foundation is aware of this) that this proposed clock is going to take the Y10k bug seriously and compensate
Re:10,000 years (Score:4, Interesting)
Just look at the Antikythera Machine [antikythera-mechanism.gr].
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Yes, ever wonder if Noah was a geneticist? How else are you going to fit all of those beasties on a boat?
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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.
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"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:4, Funny)
or to put it another way (Score:2)
Will you be able to obtain warranty service at 9,573 years from now?
Re:Errr (Score:4, Insightful)
Sometimes the term 'computer' does not literally mean the electronic thing plugged into the wall under your desk running Linux.
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Re:Errr (Score:5, Informative)
As opposed to a non-binary computer?
Yes [wikipedia.org]
Re:Errr (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, yes [wikipedia.org].
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And yes again [wikipedia.org].
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base-2 and base-3 computers have exactly the same capabilities so there is no relevance to AI. Also, base-10 is lame; humans went to it naturally because we are not very smart.
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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.