On Fri, 1 Dec 2000 09:00:29 Dennis Brownridge wrote:
...The second of time is one of the
>major weaknesses of SI, but it's too late to change now.
>...
While I agreed with nearly everything you said in this post, I unfortunately cannot on
this one above. I still honestly and sincerely do not think that it's too late for a
change there.
True, the best solution to fix this might be to redefine the second to a .864 fraction
of the current one, i.e. to make it "faster" (this would evidently entail changes in a
host of other time-related units, I know... But I'm focusing on this from a
theoretical point of view).
But I'd be happy to also consider keeping the second as is while changing time's
framework from a 24-60-60 one to some "near" decimal alternative. In that regard I
consider the "swatch time" proposal a rather interesting one.
I'm rooting for it to... "hold" or be successful. Who knows if we might eventually
"switch" to using a "beat" as an official unit of time (I know, I know, it would wreak
havoc just the same, but this is at least a proposal which is on the table and that
may have a better chance to "succeed" at fixing some "time woes" than to consider the
redefinition of time as .864 of the "old" second. BTW, who knows if this may not
trigger CGPM to reconsider meddling into this affair of time... again, "for the first
time", and finally come up with an SI version 2.0... :-) ).
Marcus
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