The Definition of a Second
After reading this article, it is safe to say that I am still formulating a thought process regarding time, and it's reality or unreality. The topic is so controversial and has so many factors that contribute to it, so it is leaning me towards that the whole topic is too advanced to be real. But for this assignment, we can talk about seconds, ticks, and standards clocks. From the year 1967 on, the second has been defined as "the duration of exactly 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to a hyperfine transition of caesium-133 in the ground state." However, because primary and secondary standards do not align at the same rate, the definition of a second is highly idealized and uncertain, much like time is. Over the course of two decades, technology has been able to help us discover that the universal time was actually off, and that seconds were actually beating slower than the clocks that kept time. Standard clocks measure more than simply time passing. These standard clocks are measured by UTC, universal time, and they measure frequencies that are related to atomic transitions. It is interesting to see how time and seconds are not simple at all, and there are many complicated layers to clocks and time itself.
Hi Becca!
ReplyDeleteI agree with you and how I am too also still trying to wrap my head around time and itself and the concept of how it works and is measured. To go off of what we read for this assignment I am curious as to how you originally thought that time was measured? For me I was honestly very surprised that it is measured by frequencies and atomic transitions.
Hi Grace,
DeleteTo be 100% honest I never really thought much of how time was measured. I guess I just always thought that it was something that was around forever. Obviously in ancient times it was measured using the sun and different natural techniques, but now that science has taken over I never really gave it much thought. It surprised me as well that it was measured by atomic transitions.
Hello Rebecca! I completely agree about how it is hard to formulate an opinion of the reality of time as it is such a complex idea. After reading this article and McTaggarts I have started to think that there are different ways to view time. The second has a mathematical and scientific definition as you have stated in this blog post. So, can we really claim that the second is unreal? From that, could we disprove that standard clock time is unreal? I don't believe so. However, I also think that this, universal time, is different from the time that McTaggart was talking about. The past present and future is a different concept than clock time and time that we measure to give us a frame of reference during the day.
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