7 ms·
ah yes, "seconds", the "second minúte part of an hour", i.e. 1/60th of 1/60th of 1/24th of the average time it takes the Earth to rotate towards Sol. very sensi
by jes5199 4y ago
ah yes, "seconds", the "second minúte part of an hour", i.e. 1/60th of 1/60th of 1/24th of the average time it takes the Earth to rotate towards Sol. very sensible default.
- db48x 4y agoNo, they obviously use the modern definition based on cesium clocks, or some equivalent. In fact, they set up long–term interplanetary communication systems so that any civilization which had fallen and rediscovered radio could learn their language and units, so customer civilizations mostly used the same definition of a second even though their day/night cycle might be completely different.
- mattigames 4y agoPersonally I vote for a new unity as a measure of time, the 10+e7 part of the speed of light, so the equivalent to 2.99792458 seconds, it's a sensible default in my opinion, perhaps also another new unity that is the third of that one, it would be very close to a second (in case the space travelers have practical applications to have such measure of time)
- jessaustin 4y agoHow does this work? To get duration from speed, you also need to designate a distance, don't you? What is special about 898,755 km?
- saalweachter 4y agoAt this point I'll note the watering hole frequency is about 20 cm, giving a conveniently big distance unit without additional parameters. If other, alien species aren't using it already, they'll be jealous enough to switch.
- db48x 4y agoOr we could just redefine c to be 300,000m/s.
- dr_dshiv 4y ago10 hours in a day, 100 minutes in an hour, 100 seconds in a minute. With that division, seconds would be 0.84 the length of current seconds. But, one second is exactly 10 alpha cycles in the brain (10 hz), which is the most dominant electrical cycle. So, maybe seconds are biologically sensible. In that case, we need to build a system that connects the rhythms of our biology to the rhythms of our planetary motion. Oh…
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- tshaddox 4y agoDon’t forget to point out the absurd arbitrariness the kilo part. Base ten number systems are just as arbitrary as the rest of this stuff we’re mocking.
- arrrg 4y ago"Kilo-" as a prefix just means thousand, derived from Greek. Doesn’t seem arbitrary to me. Can you explain what you mean by that? Of course, all number systems are arbitrary in a sense.
- tshaddox 4y agoOne thousand is an arbitrary number, and apart from its special place in our base 10 number system is no more special than, say, nine hundred ninety-nine.
- mattigames 4y agoI bet that humans at some point will discover thats actually false in the sense that the base 10 system is not completely arbitrary, and brains had an easier time evolving using the base 10 number systems (than say, base 7), and just like electricity flows through the path of least resistence even in other galaxies the same happens with how some areas of the brain evolve, that regardless of their origin they tend to use the base 10 system as well, with some minor differences.
- db48x 4y agoI would be willing to bet that some bases are easier than others, with primes being basically impossible, but not that 10 is inherently easier than 8 or 12.
- mattigames 4y agoI bet having 10 fingers makes base 10 slightly easier to understand at early ages than 8 or 12 (specially 12 and anything else greater than 10)