4 ms·
A funny consequence of this is that there are people alive today that do not know (and never will know) their exact age in seconds[1]. This is true even if we
by weinzierl 2y ago
A funny consequence of this is that there are people alive today that do not know (and never will know) their exact age in seconds[1].
This is true even if we assume the time on the birth certificate was a time precise down to the second. It is because what was considered the length of a second during part of their life varied significantly compared to what we (usually) consider a second now.
[1] Second as defined in the article as 9192631770/s being the the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium 133 atom
- amelius 2y agoI guess the Python datetime module needs some more functions then.
- lifthrasiir 2y agoYou really need one extra field for that though: uncertainty.
- LegionMammal978 2y agoEven then, you run into issues with gravitational time dilation (though at scales much smaller than whole seconds). For instance, the TAI timescale was quietly changed at one point to follow a new reference altitude, causing the 'calendar second' to run slightly differently with respect to any stationary observer. The only way to really know your age in your own proper time is to have an atomic clock following you everywhere since birth.
- simonhamp 2y agoOr perhaps surgically appended into your palm or something...
- euroderf 2y agoThat would be the ultrahigh-precision version of Logan's Run.
- amelius 2y agoTechnically your hands could (or probably) have a different age than e.g. your brains.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 2y agoThey would for sure because they move independently from brain. They will also tend to be slightly lower most of the time, so the gravity they experience is slightly larger affecting time passage. The relativistic effects of hand motion on age would be small of course, but we are talking about extreme precision here.
- billpg 2y agoIs the moment of birth defined down to the second? The process of giving birth seems more like a process (to this lay person who failed high school biology) rather than a strict binary not-yet-born/born.