Fred Ferrely wrote in message
...
Why is it always some weird, out of the way atom they play with
instead of a main-line, every day used sort of critter?

Krypton. . . Cesium . . . What ever. Why not Oxygen? Carbon?
Even good ol Iron??

Yeah! What ever happened to the good ol' days, when you could make things
you needed out of a rock?

Tom Ring wrote:
Cecil Moore wrote:

wrote:

Go argue with the standards people.



I have no argument with the standards people. My
argument is with the people who take present
day seconds and lay them end-to-end back to the
Big Bang to ascertain the age of the universe.
Today's second may be the first time the second
has ever had that particular value. The first
second was likely many magnitudes longer than
the present day second.


Have you ever heard of the fine structure constant? You had best check
into it and how it can be verified from a distance, a very very long
distance.

tom
K0TAR

f=ma
e=mc^2

You guys are probably in agreement to this point.

Now the killer

S=(Ac^3)/(4hG)


Where did it go..... :-)

While I do not fully understand great physics, the subject can show the
great penalties of staying confined to a certain way of thinking.

Christopher Cox wrote:

While I do not fully understand great physics, the subject can show the
great penalties of staying confined to a certain way of thinking.

Truth. However, staying confined to the realm of fact usually carries
with it only the smallest of penalties. I'm not sure the foregoing
discussion stayed as strictly confined.

73, ac6xg

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 -

Michael Coslo wrote:
The cesium standard is defined as "in the absence of external
influences.

The Catholic Church said the same thing in the
16th century. Paraphrasing them: In the absence
of external influences, the Earth is the center
of the universe. That's true to this very day.
Take away all the external influences and the
Earth is indeed the center of the universe.
--
73, Cecil http://www.w5dxp.com

Cecil Moore wrote:
Michael Coslo wrote:

The cesium standard is defined as "in the absence of external influences.


The Catholic Church said the same thing in the
16th century. Paraphrasing them: In the absence
of external influences, the Earth is the center
of the universe. That's true to this very day.
Take away all the external influences and the
Earth is indeed the center of the universe.

Yes, the Catholic Church felt that the Sun was not at the center of
the universe. What an old fashioned notion. :-)

ac6xg

Cecil Moore wrote:
Michael Coslo wrote:
The cesium standard is defined as "in the absence of external influences.

The Catholic Church said the same thing in the
16th century. Paraphrasing them: In the absence
of external influences, the Earth is the center
of the universe. That's true to this very day.
Take away all the external influences and the
Earth is indeed the center of the universe.


I didn't know that the Catholic church even knew about atomic clocks at
that time, Cecil! Something new to learn every day. 8^)

You slippery sloped from an atomic clock to ancient religion on me.

"in the absence of incontrovertible proof to the contrary, the world
was created in the fall of 4004 B.C." ;^)


One of the things that help us in the determination of cosmological
age, and all scientific endeavors is that most things end up fitting
together pretty well. Atomic decay tends to mesh together with
determination of the age of artifacts. It proved itself on items of
known age. The concept simply works. That's just one example.

To say that all things have been discovered is naive hubris though. I'm
still waiting for evidence of proton decay, without it the Big Bang has
a Big Problem. But it doesn't make sense to throw everything we do know
away because of that one issue - at least until something better comes
along that fits with what we do know.

Let's drop away from cosmology for a moment..


Take say, number 14 bare wire, and make a dipole for some arbitrary
frequency. at some arbitrary height.

Raise the antenna and lower the antenna. Do the antenna characteristics
stay the same?

Substitute insulated number 14 wire for the bare wire at the same
length. Do the characteristics stay the same?


Of course not. The differences are easily measurable, or at least
easily modelable.

That isn't religion, it fits in with what we do know about physics.
That VF changes depending on the insulating material doesn't mean that
the original characteristics are null and void. Just means they have
changed in a manner that is predictable, and for which cause is known.

No Papal Bull required! ;^)


- 73 de Mike KB3EIA -

Michael Coslo wrote:
One of the things that help us in the determination of cosmological
age, and all scientific endeavors is that most things end up fitting
together pretty well. Atomic decay tends to mesh together with
determination of the age of artifacts. It proved itself on items of
known age. The concept simply works. That's just one example.

Actually, there is an unexplained time drift between atomic
decay and Bristle Cone Pine rings that can be explained if
seconds are getting shorter.

That isn't religion, it fits in with what we do know about physics.

And of course, that is in the present space-time. But using
a localized present space-time standard to obtain an absolute
value for something that existed far outside of that present
localized space-time just doesn't "fit". For all we know, the
first half of the existence of the universe consumed all of
one second of space-time as it existed way back then.

What is the length of time that it takes for one entangled
particle to have an affect the other when they are a million
miles apart?
--
73, Cecil, http://www.qsl.net/w5dxp

Cecil Moore wrote:

Actually, there is an unexplained time drift between atomic
decay and Bristle Cone Pine rings that can be explained if
seconds are getting shorter.

Assuming the time it takes for the Earth to orbit around the Sun is an
absolute, of course. ;-)

73 de jk

Jim Kelley wrote:



Cecil Moore wrote:

Actually, there is an unexplained time drift between atomic
decay and Bristle Cone Pine rings that can be explained if
seconds are getting shorter.


Assuming the time it takes for the Earth to orbit around the Sun is an
absolute, of course. ;-)

73 de jk



The only thing in Physics that is absolute is: "Nothing is absolute!"