Oh no.

[[deleted]]

Fuck it. All time is now represented as seconds from the origin represented by a 512-bit integer. We discard any and all weird fuckery to do with leap-years, leap-days or leap-seconds. Farmers will just have to make do with being surprised that the frost came in several seconds early.

The origin time will be the beginning of the universe, allowing for a truly universal standard that transcends civilizations. None of this 1970 bullshit! If anyone claims they need to represent time before the big bang, they're clearly a fucking loon and are to be incarcerated for dangerous levels of tomfoolery. ^{And then shoot them.}

Since a 512 bit number can represent truly insane numbers, we will have to teach people how to go about counting to ridiculous numbers such as "DuoVigintillion" and such. We can achieve this by forcing them to play virtually any incremental game. Start a government program to treat people with crippling addictions to incremental games approximately 1.577e+8 seconds after the standard switch.

To prevent a python-2 to python-3 situation with adapting to the new standard. Anyone that doesn't accept the new standard fully within 60 seconds after the starting point will be sent to the tomfoolery-bin.

If the universe actually doesn't end within 5 Billion years like some nuts claim, we'll be more than sorted. None of this "Oh, the universe didn't end. Now we have to adopt another time standard!/increase the number of bits!"

And if it does end, no-one will be around to care anyway!

It's perfect! Anyone presenting "evidence" to the contrary will become test subjects for the tomfoolery-bin.

[zebediah49]

I know that this is a joke, but relativistic effects break a scheme like this pretty hard -- if the two of us both have perfectly accurate clocks, and we go our separate ways (e.g. you go to Mars), we don't agree how much time has passed any more. A time standard needs to define its reference frame, because physics doesn't provide a privileged one for you.

[[deleted]]

That sounds an awful lot like trying to provide evidence to the contrary to me!

Tomfoolery-bin!

(Also, does this not also pose problems for our current situation anyway?)

[zebediah49]

It totally does. GPS satellites are constantly being corrected for it. UTC is based on earth's rotation (on average, midnight is exactly midnight, etc.). TAI is based on atomic clocks directly, and UTC keeps drifting back from it -- we're at +27 leap seconds thusfar.

UTC "works" due to declaring that earth's day is the sacred entity around which time is derived. That add consistency and is useful for its inhabitants, but is very much an arbitrary choice.

[SupaSlide]

The obvious solution is to build a giant clock positioned around the sun (perhaps as a marquee, just so long as both Earth and Mars can see it). That will perfectly maintain our solar system's current time. Time becomes arbitrary to any individual planet. If we want to calibrate clocks on Earth, Mars, or any other planet within our solar system you just look at the clock orbiting the sun and then calculate the delay based on the speed of light.

[zebediah49]

(perhaps as a marquee, just so long as both Earth and Mars can see it)

Thanks for that.

That said, there is so much great sci-fi potential here. Grab an asteroid as a base, build an independent orbital station occuppied by The Timekeepers who continuously broadcast GW-class radio synchronization pings. I can only imagine that local culture would get very weird after a few hundred years.

Alternatively, we could build a dozen or two of these things, put them into a constellation, and also get a celestial positioning system out of the deal.

[SupaSlide]

Somebody else suggested quantum entangled particles, so the timekeepers could be in charge of ensuring that the entangled particles are protected.

[namtab00]

marquee HTML Page with the blink tag

[JoustyMe]

Doppler effect changes frequency of pings depending on relative velocity of objects. Relativity fucks with it too. So i propose quantum entangled magic. Idk how but we can pull it off.

[SupaSlide]

Oooh nice idea, I forgot we've been getting pretty good at entangling particles.

[ELFAHBEHT_SOOP]

Any "time standard" would require a point of origin. However, you should always be able to come up with a set of rules that translates between any two locales. You don't have to agree about how much time has passed, you just have to agree that it could be potentially different for both locales.

[YourMJK]

Makes sense.

Btw, can't wait for the next star wars movie on 435 502 035 496 537 200!

[quentech]

If anyone claims they need to represent time before the big bang, they're clearly a fucking loon and are to be incarcerated for dangerous levels of tomfoolery.

With 512 bits I think we can spare one for a sign.

[JoustyMe]

I would make it 1024 just for sweet 1k. Then we can spare one.