this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2025
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Technology
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I don't think there's much way around seconds for terrestrial timekeeping. Defining the second by a round number of caesium oscillations causes issues with timekeeping on any larger scale. Defining distance is wildly different from deciding to ignore the Earth's rotation and its role in defining days.
OK for timekeeping but I'd say that's mostly for human scale stuff and as you say involves dumb stuff like leap seconds every handful of years, and presumably the Earth's spin and orbits will change more radically eventually - i guess we're just expecting humans to die out before it becomes too much more of a problem.
But thinking about measuring for science - irrespective of human geocentrism?
Should scientific measures all be built up from planck units or something?
Given that time is more of a human construct than a natural, measurable thing, I don't know what reasonable options would look like. We very quickly run into relativity!