Time Tidbits
Does Time Move Too Fast or Too Slow?
Enjoy this inlet where we publish occasional discoveries and news about Time. There’s always more to notice as life rushes us along …
What’s the fuss about the history of Time?
That’s a good question, but I wanted to know something different:
I was in a hurry to know why we have 24 hours in a day.
To fnd out, I had to gallop on my computer all the way to Australia from the City of Angels. Luckily, it only took about 0.42 seconds since I have 32GB of RAM in my trusty Apple-orchard-bred steed and my browser was in a great mood. Whew!
Now I’ve got 6,610,000,000 answers, but I only need one. The winning facts were volunteered by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and seem to match what I keep seeing across my ever-expanding investigations into time. The vintage-2011 article is terrific, from an interview of Dr. Nick Lomb of the Sydney Observatory by Kylie Andrews for ABC Science, and here’s my favorite quote:
“Our 24-hour day comes from the ancient Egyptians who divided day-time into 10 hours they measured with devices such as shadow clocks, and added a twilight hour at the beginning and another one at the end of the day-time, says Lomb. "Night-time was divided in 12 hours, based on the observations of stars.”
Ancient Egyptians get all sorts of credit for noticing what our planet kept doing naturally: having seasons, with darkness and light you could set your sundial by. The Egyptians just lumped darkness together and didn’t spend much time divvying it up into distinct hours on sundials, because they couldn’t see the sun’s motion in the dark! D-oh! Sleeping and nighttime hijinks are what people did at night. Daytime got all the attention from sundials, and farming, trading, exploring, wars, sports, festivals and other busy human pursuits worked better with daylight. They all became more precisely measured as sundials became clocks, eventually suited to even new-fangled tasks they help us do now in this modern age.
Ancient Babylonians, Chinese, Mayans, Aboriginals, Arabs and other early cultures gravitated to setting up time systems using units of 60, which survive today as hours, minutes, seconds, etc. Even circles were given 360 degrees, and clocks got round. They spent forever in circular form displaying “analog” time. Once we dreamed up “digital” time, we got all those little boxes with just barebones numbers. No. More. Circles. Awww…
But many clocks are still beautiful, and not “Bot-like” at all. I suspect they’ll be with us into the foreseeable future, just as our system of counting time has endured since humans first noticed the persistent dawns of time!
You are the designated inheritor of the ancients’ passion for TIME.
I invite you to enjoy your relationship with Time!
We love pondering Time’s good, bad and ugly, plus the Wow! that comes from opening up to the creative energy that enjoying Time adds to our lives. And there’s always something new, so join us for the Scoop!
Eclipse Day still matters!
It began April 8, 2024 and its effect impacts our energy for six months, so it’s still with us thru October 2024.
Six things to know about why we remain fascinated by Solar Eclipses, eons into humanity’s journey through space…
When & Where
Who Eats Who?
Kairos & Chronos
Arrows & Rockets
Space & Time
To Do or Not To Do… is that the question?
Too busy for an eclipse?
For future reference… the “totalty phase takes only 4± minutes.
You can an alarm, so no matter where you are, you can notice any unusual shadowing of light in the sky.
Be safe if you don’t have special glasses. There’s a link in our blog to get more info about safety.
There you go: Easy!
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