Jimmie D wrote:
"Richard Clark" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 26 Jan 2007 23:22:38 GMT, Dave Oldridge
wrote:

The same problem still exists. The cesium atom didn't
exist before the first super nova. How can the time
be calculated between the Big Bang and the first super
nova if cesium didn't exist?
There are other entropic processes that can be calibrated against the
cesium.
Hi Dave,

You have been snookered into answering a complaint manufactured (as
usual) from the misapplication of relationships. The resonance of
Cesium is not a function of time. Time is not a function of Cesium's
resonance (the incorrect correlation drawn, to which you are
responding).

There is no dependency between the two. It is our dependency in our
usage of one to measure the other. The sophism above is much like
saying sound did not exist before someone was close enough to hear the
falling tree. The excitation of gas molecules we call sound existed
long before the appearance of the first amoeba, much less apes in
falling trees. Both sound and time are phenomenological terms for
simple and rational physical processes that exist without dependence
on us.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC

Yes, time is about as much related to the vibration of a cesium atom as it
is to the pendulum im my grandfather clock.

Time is related to nothing. Time *is*. Sorry Cecil - I read the book
too and it didn't do much for me. That fellow wants to throw away
everything for little - perhaps we should call his methods S'macco razor?

The cesium standard is defined as "in the absence of external
influences. Not a thing at all there that is strange. The meter, that
most arbitrary of measurements, had a standard, the Platinum-Iridium
metre that must be measured at the temperature of melting ice. Measure
it at 1200 degrees, and you'll get a different result.

Nobody denies the existence of the meter.

Oh, heres a good one. Today, the official measurement of the meter is
1,650,763.73 times the wavelength of the emission of Krypton-86 atoms in
a vacuum.

Since we usually don't have that lying around the house, they tied it
to time and the speed of light.

This tells us that the meter is the length of the path traveled by
light in a vacuum during a time interval of 1/299 792 458 second. for us
dilettantes, although official measurements must still use the other mode.

So what's all this crap that Coslo's spouting?

Simply this:

It's all arbitrary

Nothing stays the same - Things change because of external forces,
Everything changes - If we were Doppler shifted, items that were along
with us for the ride would be the same.

Those weird elements were chosen by conditions at the limits of our
measurement abilities at the time we settled upon them.

That the elements change under different conditions doesn't negate their
use at the proper conditions.

- 73 de Mike KB3EIA -