10,000yr Clock

[MadMango]

Pretty amazing, but not sure the purpose.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/06/10000-year-clock/all/1

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."


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[BJC]

Count the number of times he puts his picture on the website, looks like ego is a big factor.

 

[Skogsgurra]

This is just great! And I do not say big - great!

Someone wrote a comment that as long as cancer and M.S. haven't been eliminated, we shouldn't use good money for projects like this.

Why not?

Gunnar Englund

http://www.gke.org

--------------------------------------
Half full - Half empty? I don't mind. It's what in it that counts.

 

[patprimmer]

People said we should not waste money putting a man on the moon, but the space race accelerated development of technologies that found a great variety of application, including medical.

Regards
Pat
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[dpc]

I like it. Probably more worthwhile than all the sports teams, yachts and miscellaneous junk that Paul Allen has spent billions on.

Kind of a Jeff Bezos stimulus program for machinists.

David Castor

http://www.cvoes.com

 

[unclesyd]

Speaking of clocks and time. At least I'll have an excuse if I overcook or burn something in the oven.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-06-power-grid-disrupt-clocks.html

Do all synchronous moors run off the input power frequency?

 

[Compositepro]

Well, yes synchronous motors all do. Modern digital clocks may have internal quartz oscillators to keep time or they may simply count cycles on the power line. The power grid regulators are asking manufacturers and others for input about how disruptive the switch from long term frequency control would be because no one knows for sure.

 

[Guest0527211403]

So when this thing stops in 10,000 years, I can picture some future civilization gathering around expecting the return of the messiah or some nonsense like that.
Imagine the look on their faces when the clock. just. stops. Talk about anti-climactic.

 

[waross]

Good ideas are often thwarted by selfish little minds with the crassest of motivations.
A couple of anecdotes:
Hiking along the beach in the Moskito Coast region of Honduras I saw a number of strange devices. Imagine a concrete slab about eight feet square with a bollard in the center. It looked like something that a ships lines may be fastened to but no-one was going to be trying to moor a small ship on a sandy beach. From time to time a boat would come to grief on the beach and it only took a day or so for a small storm and wave action to destroy the boat. A mooring device was not the purpose.
I finally found out the purpose of the devices. A do-good feel-good group had decided that the villagers living along the beach needed latrines. The devices were the lid of a septic tank and a cast in place, concrete toilet. There was originally an enclosure but when the builders left there was a rush to steal all the building material that could easily be moved.

On a trip through the beach villages in the same area, I noticed a pipe issuing about three feet from the ground every few miles.
Another Do-good feel-good group had decided that wells would be a good idea and had installed well points and hand pumps in the villages. No-one owned these improvements and no-one had responsibility for them. I was told that a local drug user had removed the pumps and sold them to purchase drugs until all the pumps were gone.

I suggest that by far the most challenging problem will not be building a 10,000 year clock or 10,000 year any-thing.
The problem will be ensuring the security of the device.
I visualize a group seeking shelter during a downturn in civilization sometime in the future. It won't take much intellectual capacity to figure out where to drop a rock so that the darn thing stops and the ticking doesn't keep every one awake all night.
Some equally mundane fate will do this clock in long before the 10.000 years pass.

Bill
--------------------
"Why not the best?"
Jimmy Carter

 

[Skogsgurra]

True and sad, Bill.

Gunnar Englund

http://www.gke.org

--------------------------------------
Half full - Half empty? I don't mind. It's what in it that counts.

 

[patprimmer]

Yes, very true. Take the pyramids for example.

Regards
Pat
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[MadMango]

If the clock continues to operates for another 2-5k years, I wonder what sort of cultures and cults it will spawn? I wonder if doomsday cults will bicker between themselves as to when the 10k year "count down" should be considered to have started?

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."


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[Eltron]

Why 10,000 years? How many sig-figs is that? What needs to be maintained after then?

Dan

http://www.eltronresearch.com

Dan's Blog

 

[JStephen]

My prediction- in the year 2050, it will be broken up for scrap.

 

[ivymike]

by the sound of it, around 10k-yrs you'd need to lift the big rock back to the top and drop it again.

 

[tbuelna]

Here's a 300 year-old clock that is still accurate to a fraction of a second.

http://www.grant.org/plewins/india2000/Rajasthan1/Sundial.html

It an optical solid state design to boot!