It was quite a big news story that the earthquake was so powerful that it knocked the earth's axis by about 3 inches. Now this doesn't seem too huge I suppose, but this does mean that our days are now shorter... by about one millionth of a second... Ok so that doesn't sound like alot either... and after doing the math it would seem we are due an extra day in the year 130373... so remember future... I told you so... but I will get back to my proposed party day between new years eve and January the first later (thank me then world of many tomorrows...).
The thing that got me thinking is time...
Time as we know it is based on the fundamental that the earth rotates upon it's axis and causes a constant passing of the sun across the sky... this has always been a fixed amount of time, meaning that sundials don't need repositioning at all. A day, was one passing of the sun, and hour was 1/24th of this, a minute 1/60th of an hour, and a second 1/60th of a minute... so what now? A day is shorter, so now so too are hours, seconds, minutes and all other smaller denominations.
So does this mean that time we have changed time by national desaster? and what about speed? meters per second, miles per hour... do we now have to drive fractionally slower? will distance therefore change? A lightyear being the distance that light travels in a year... now falls a few "meters" short...
Sadly while all this amazing ranting was rushing through my head I came to a realisation... time is time, and our measures of it are flawed at best. We created measures of time divided up roughly... and we sucked at it... we had to change the calendar alot to get it to actually match the length of a year... but then we realised that a year wasn't perfectly divisible by days... so we have a leap-year... an extra day every 4 years to correct ourselves... but then this isn't quite right so we then make another fiddle every 100years or so... so perhaps my proposed party day will simply be introduced every 130374 years... Or perhaps by then we will be out the other way with our calculations and my awesome day will be used to absorb an abundance of left over day.
Ok so I am going OTT hypothetical now... but still you get the idea, and sadly there is the far more likely scenario that going by the "equal and opposite" theory we will have some equally terrible tragedy causing an effect that will cancel out this shift.... though I imagine I will be dead and without due method of blogging by then (assuming my immortality machine fails).
So until next time (which I am hoping to be sooner, I will attempt more frequent posts)... you stay classy world!
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