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Time and timekeeping



 
 
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  #1  
Old April 9th 17, 11:32 AM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Gerald Kelleher
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Default Time and timekeeping

There was a movie out a few years ago about a mathematician who ended up in a wheelchair so now I believe there is a similar docu-drama coming out via National Geographic about the originator of relativity.

I suppose the whole thing is like those Russian dolls where the largest and most visible contains a smaller and more concise technical structure of the same nature but further back in history. Winding it all back to the core assertion it all boils down to an attempt to make a timekeeping facility based on the calendar system look like time itself -

"Absolute time, in astronomy, is distinguished from relative, by the equation of time. For the natural days are truly unequal, though they are commonly considered as equal and used for a measure of time; astronomers correct this inequality for their more accurate deducing of the celestial motions...The necessity of which equation, for determining the times of a phænomenon, is evinced as well from the experiments of the pendulum clock, as by eclipses of
the satellites of Jupiter." Principia

Unlike the present astronomical imaging which is used to modify older and less productive insights, this thread merely points out that the theorists have been living off voodoo and bluffing for centuries and inevitably lead down a road to an intellectual cul-de-sac,if people haven't already noticed. This thread is a reminder that there is another way that leaves room for the theorists but they have to accept astronomy on what you can see and show instead of the useless speculation that has turned the celestial arena into a junkyard.

The Equation of Time which Newton so badly mangled is a wonderful expression of the Earth's dual surface rotations to the central Sun and it is about time there was support for the development of this fact.
  #2  
Old April 11th 17, 01:59 PM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Gerald Kelleher
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Default Time and timekeeping

This being Holy Week perhaps it is better to make a distinction more closer to the truth than the difference between time and timekeeping insofar as the latter is founded on the calendar system which apportions the natural 1461 rotations within 4 consecutive orbital circumferences into the familiar format of 365/366 days. It is therefore immediately obvious that a year doesn't equate directly to one orbital circuit even if presently nobody makes this distinction.

As a Christian the distinction between individual life and time is not philosophical but an intrinsic experience where one morphs into the other when appropriate. The difference between an individual life within the life of the Universe can be presented as the passage of time as we participate in all the workings of the Earth,solar system,galaxy or whatever larger scale structures there are or witness the historical trajectory of life on Earth as it developed from simple forms.

Over the last 100 years it became popular to announce that 'clocks measure time' but such a declaration is cheap and unworthy of any individual . We pass through existence and take in the grandeur of it all as best we can insofar as pretense casts no shadow on astronomy nor does it provide any admittance to that noble endeavor. The ground where temporal and Eternal Life meet has always been inside the individual, not as a thought or conviction but as a feeling that is like a fountain in how it lights up information. It is the language of the Johanine gospel which occupies itself less that the other gospels in pointing out the deficiencies of the existing authorities but address the timeless concerns of the individual for what is Timeless is also Eternal.

  #3  
Old April 11th 17, 02:42 PM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Quadibloc
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Default Time and timekeeping

On Tuesday, April 11, 2017 at 6:59:19 AM UTC-6, Gerald Kelleher wrote:
founded on the calendar system which apportions the natural 1461 rotations
within 4 consecutive orbital circumferences into the familiar format of 365/366
days. It is therefore immediately obvious that a year doesn't equate directly to
one orbital circuit even if presently nobody makes this distinction.


A _calendar_ year, which may be 365 or 366 days long, indeed doesn't equate
directly to "one orbital circuit", if by that you mean a sidereal year of
365.25636 days. It doesn't even directly equate to the *tropical* year of
365.2422 days, which is what the calendar year is intended to approximate to.

But it's not clear what precisely is your point.

John Savard
  #4  
Old April 11th 17, 02:59 PM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Quadibloc
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Default Time and timekeeping

On Tuesday, April 11, 2017 at 6:59:19 AM UTC-6, Gerald Kelleher wrote:
Over the last 100 years it became popular to announce that 'clocks measure time'
but such a declaration is cheap and unworthy of any individual .


In one sense, it is true that phrase is inaccurate. Time is not something we can
handle and manipulate, and so clocks don't measure it the way that a yardstick
measures cloth.

But I don't think that this is your point.

A mechanical clock, whether it uses a spring or a pendulum or a quartz crystal,
is intended to behave in an unvarying way; to repeat a certain beat, a certain
motion, over and over, taking the same duration for each repetition.

The Equation of Time shows that the daily apparent motion of the Sun in the sky,
over the course of a year, exhibits variations with respect to the time that
mechanical clocks indicate.

If I am baking a cake in an oven, and at a certain temperature, it will take 30
minutes for it to be done, it won't matter if I am baking that cake on April 3rd or June 20th, even though the sundial runs slightly faster on the first date and
slightly slower on the second. The cake is baking on its own, not tied to the
great astronomical cycles, in the same way that the hairspring of a clock moves
on its own, not tied to the great astronomical cycles.

This is why today we use clock time for our purposes of daily living, and not
sundial time.

We even have leap seconds, because we regulate our clocks by the average length
of the day over a hundred years ago, and some of those clocks are accurate
enough to detect that the Earth's rotation has slowed very slightly in that
time.

This is due to the increased mechanization of our world and the importance of
computer networks and the like.

John Savard
  #5  
Old April 11th 17, 03:38 PM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Quadibloc
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Default Time and timekeeping

Incidentally, this inspired me to look up information about the balance spring
of a watch. I found only one page, and that in Swedish, which gave the
information that the alloy Anibal was a steel alloy with 44.4% nickel.

This alloy was important because the bimetallic strips in a temperature-
compensating balance wheel then exhibited nonlinear behavior, so that they
compensated for the changes in elasticity of a plain steel balance spring or
hairspring in the middle of the range, not just at the ends of the temperature
range.

Think of how an apochromatic lens is superior to a normal achromat.

Of course, the Guillaume balance became obsolete as the same Guillaume invented
Elinvar, an alloy for the balance spring that had an invariant modulus of
elasticity.

John Savard
  #6  
Old April 12th 17, 09:21 AM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Paul Schlyter[_3_]
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Default Time and timekeeping

On Tue, 11 Apr 2017 07:38:09 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
wrote:
Incidentally, this inspired me to look up information about the

balance spring
of a watch. I found only one page, and that in Swedish, which gave

the
information that the alloy Anibal was a steel alloy with 44.4%

nickel.

Do you still have the URL to that web page? I'd like to read it.
  #7  
Old April 12th 17, 09:47 AM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Martin Brown[_3_]
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Default Time and timekeeping

On 12/04/2017 09:21, Paul Schlyter wrote:
On Tue, 11 Apr 2017 07:38:09 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc
wrote:
Incidentally, this inspired me to look up information about the

balance spring
of a watch. I found only one page, and that in Swedish, which gave

the
information that the alloy Anibal was a steel alloy with 44.4%

nickel.

Do you still have the URL to that web page? I'd like to read it.


Not the same webpage but Guillaume's Noble Prize speech is online:

https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_pri...me-lecture.pdf

The ultra compensated balance wheel using Anibal is mentioned in passing
towards the end. Invar and Elinvar get pride of place in his main talk.
(Anibal is a sort of compositional tweak of Invar)

Poor old Anibal alloy is lacking a Wiki entry or a mention in Nickel
Cobalt & their Alloys (that I can see).

--
Regards,
Martin Brown
  #8  
Old April 12th 17, 12:49 PM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Gerald Kelleher
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Default Time and timekeeping

Thanks to everyone for the recent variation on the sporge flood introduced into threads however the music of astronomy can't be drowned out no matter how faint it sounds to an individual.

Many things of human origin can be described as 'timeless' in that regardless of what era they are placed they evoke the same feeling of satisfaction as they originally did. The example of Copernicus being that rather than looping/wandering motions intrinsic to individual planets as they move around a stationary Earth, the correct resolution is a faster moving Earth overtaking slower moving planets in a Sun centered system -

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap011220.html


The narrative of human involvement in timekeeping is also spectacular even if the story is extended across many thousands of years where timekeeping comes into close proximity to the daily and orbital cycles of the Earth, in fact, timekeeping is also a timeless positive of human history. It too has a founding image attached, in this case the first annual appearance of a star to the right of the Sun or a dawn appearance as observers would register it -

http://www.gautschy.ch/~rita/archast...liacsirius.JPG

It is the sight of this star which determines the proportions of rotations to orbital circuits and specifically the close proximity of 1461 rotations to 4 orbital circuits which reduces, by logic, to 365 1/4 rotations to one circuit.

The great events of Holy Week are designed around astronomical events but denominational Christianity has unfortunately lost the significance and the joy of its astronomical heritage and will always lacking something on that account.

  #9  
Old April 12th 17, 02:17 PM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Mike Collins[_4_]
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Default Time and timekeeping

Gerald Kelleher wrote:
Thanks to everyone for the recent variation on the sporge flood
introduced into threads however the music of astronomy can't be drowned
out no matter how faint it sounds to an individual.

Many things of human origin can be described as 'timeless' in that
regardless of what era they are placed they evoke the same feeling of
satisfaction as they originally did.


Nothing in human origin can be describes as timeless.



The example of Copernicus being that rather than looping/wandering

motions intrinsic to individual planets as they move around a stationary
Earth, the correct resolution is a faster moving Earth overtaking slower
moving planets in a Sun centered system -

The example of Copernicus is that following on from the astronomical work
of Tycho Brahe heliocentric system of Aristarchus of Samos (he deleted all
mention of him from his published works but left them in the notes for
scholars to discover) the heliocentric system could be put on a better
theoretical basis.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap011220.html


The narrative of human involvement in timekeeping is also spectacular
even if the story is extended across many thousands of years where
timekeeping comes into close proximity to the daily and orbital cycles of
the Earth, in fact, timekeeping is also a timeless positive of human
history. It too has a founding image attached, in this case the first
annual appearance of a star to the right of the Sun or a dawn appearance
as observers would register it -

It's easy to summarise human involvement in timekeeping - we got better and
better at it and now we can measure time with such accuracy that we know
how unreliable the movements of the Earth are as the basis of time
measurement.

http://www.gautschy.ch/~rita/archast...liacsirius.JPG

It is the sight of this star which determines the proportions of
rotations to orbital circuits and specifically the close proximity of
1461 rotations to 4 orbital circuits which reduces, by logic, to 365 1/4
rotations to one circuit.

No it was a clue for ancient astronomers who would have done anything for
the accurate time measurements we now have available.

The great events of Holy Week are designed around astronomical events but
denominational Christianity has unfortunately lost the significance and
the joy of its astronomical heritage and will always lacking something on that account.

The celebrations of the superstitious at this time or year depend in the
lunar calendar which is so imprecise a measurement of the solar year that
it needs long calculations to work out the date of Easter. (And these
usually in dispute between Orthodox and Catholic witch doctors.





  #10  
Old April 12th 17, 06:22 PM posted to sci.astro.amateur
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Default Time and timekeeping

On Wednesday, April 12, 2017 at 12:49:07 PM UTC+1, Gerald Kelleher wrote:
in this case the first annual appearance of a star to the right of the Sun or a dawn appearance as observers would register it -

So for Sirius, for example, does that happen before the summer Solstice or after it?

 




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