« back to article

Discuss “How Things Work: Time”

I?m not quite sure how to say this, but I?ll try to break it to you easy: We have no idea how time works.

The quantization of time was man?s first scientific idea, and while the accuracy of our measurements of this magic quantity have improved, our understanding of it has not. I can tell you how a cesium clock works, but I can?t tell you how time works. The best I can do is describe it.

Here?s the official version: ?The International System of Units (SI) has defined the second as the period equal to 9,192,631,770 cycles of the radiation which corresponds to the transition between two energy levels of the ground state of the cesium-133 atom.? Wow. To my remaining readers: I promise I won?t do that again.

Time has boggled our minds ever since...

Comments

Be heard

Name:
Required
Email:
Optional
Comment:

Comment guidelines

If you provide an email address, it will be displayed. This may make you more vulnerable to spammers.

HTML is not allowed. Paragraphs are automatically created by leaving a blank line. Links are created from URLs automatically.

Off-topic or inappropriate (e.g. obscene, libelous) comments are not permitted and will be removed.

Important: The Tartan provides these discussion boards to encourage discussion about the topics we report. The views and opinions expressed in these comments are those of their authors, and do not reflect the opinions of The Tartan.