[vox_mundi]

Construction Begins on Jeff Bezos’ $42 Million 10,000-Year Clock

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced Tuesday that installation has begun on a giant clock intended to keep time for the next 10,000 years. Housed in a mountain in a remote part of the West Texas desert that Bezos owns, this clock is the next step in the realization of a decades-old dream both for the tech mogul and for its creator, supercomputer pioneer Danny Hillis.

As Bezos revealed in a tweet, the finished clock will stand 500 feet high, be fully mechanical and solar-powered, and keep accurate time by synchronizing each day with solar noon. This clock isn’t technically the Clock of the Long Now, the final version that will be built for the public atop Nevada’s Mount Washington, but rather a full-scale prototype to ensure the actual clock really does tick along for 100 centuries.



... Then there are problems of human creation to consider. Take global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps.

“For me, it was very hard to relate to until it actually started influencing the design of the clock, because the clock, of course, has to keep time in days,” Hollis told NPR in 2011. “But when the polar ice caps melt, the Earth actually starts spinning at a slightly different rate. And it turns out, over 10,000 years that really matters. And so, the mechanism of the clock actually had to take that into account and adjust it. So, for me, that made this kind of abstract concept of global warming much more real and serious.”

... It’s possible future generations will no longer count time in even remotely the same way that we do, making a traditional clock face meaningless.

[jedrider]

Sadly, there won't be anyone left to find it after just a couple of centuries. Rome and Egypt weeps for us as they lasted far longer (oh, shouldn't leave out China, as they will most likely be the last civilization standing).