"Poul-Henning Kamp" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Pulsars were considered for timekeeping several times in the past, and in > every instance the winning argument was "You want to base our timekeeping > on some cosmic phenomena we don't even know what is ?".
Well, look at how dependent NTP and navigation and telecommunications is on GPS sats today. There the uncertainty isn't the technology but the military/government/funding/infrastructure behind them. Glonass helps, as will Galileo. I'm a little surprised there aren't more Glonass receivers out there (they seemed confined to a segment of the surveying population although maybe my view isn't quite as global as it should be.) The threat isn't quite as big as the funding to the IERS = International Earth Rotation Service. Cut off their budget and the earth may stop turning, it's almost as bad as the Philosopher's Union! Seafarers happily used astronomical fixes (along with a good chronometer) for many years long before we understood stellar dynamics. Full understanding of a phenomena is hardly necessary to use it as part of a tool. That said, I think we understand pulsars a little better than we did at first discovery (where the LGM hypothesis seemed to stand out...) Tim. _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list time-nuts@febo.com https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts