Metric and Decimal Time

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Daniel

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Metric and Decimal Time
« on: August 14, 2009, 01:26:15 PM »
I grew up in the US and then moved to the UK as an adult.  Living in the US, I never really found anything strange about using pounds, ounces, inches, feet, yards, etc.  It's what I was taught as a child and it worked well enough for most things.  After moving here, though, I had to make a partial* switch to the Metric system.  The Metric system is so much more sensible and practical to work with and I wish the UK would make a complete switch a-la mainland Europe.  But despite the ease of measuring distance, weight, volume, etc in Metric, very few people seem bothered by the weird way we measure time.  Divisions of 60, 12, 7, 28-31, 365, etc are pretty confusing.  Why not switch to Metric time?  Or, more practically, Decimal time?  The French actually gave Decimal Time a try around the time of the French Revolution but the introduction of the time-less metric system effectively ended that.  It's unfortunate because it's a much more reasonable system of measuring time.  Maybe it's too late to bring it back, though.  Computer/electronic systems are based on the convention idea of what a 'second' is and it would be very difficult to break free of that.  One can always dream, though!


* The British system of measurement is actually a messy combination of Imperial and Metric systems with a few .  Speed limits are miles per hour, short lengths in milli/centimeters, fruits and vegetables at the grocery store are in kilograms (except sometimes it's not), beer is in pints, body weight in stone (14 lbs = 1 stone), canned drinks in milliliters, etc.

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General Douchebag

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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #1 on: August 14, 2009, 01:54:48 PM »
The Romans decided that day and night were equal so that their clocks could be roughly correct everywhere in their vast tracts of territory, and divided the day into twelve parts, horae. They were divided into sixty parts, pars minuta prima, first small parts, which were likewise divided into pars minuta secunda, second small parts. As the words passed through French and Middle English to what we know now, it's pretty easy to see how they developed into what we know, the system likewise.
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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #2 on: August 15, 2009, 08:52:24 AM »
Don't forget a lot of our timing systems are based off of astrology. So readjusting time to the decimal system would only really work for hours, minutes and seconds.
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General Douchebag

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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #3 on: August 15, 2009, 09:16:25 AM »
Don't forget a lot of our timing systems are based off of astrology. So readjusting time to the decimal system would only really work for hours, minutes and seconds.

You mean astronomy, right? Because if it's astrology then I'm never using the Gregorian calendar again.
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Chris Spaghetti

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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #4 on: August 15, 2009, 09:42:31 AM »
Decimal time could work.

If we divide the day by 100 that gives us a unit of time equal to 14.4 roman Minutes let's call this base unit a Cent to begin with (Unless you've got a name which doesn't conflict with currency.) and into each cent can go 1000 units (Mils?) which would make each Mil = 0.86 seconds and into that as many other divisions as you need.

Now we have to keep the number of days in a year because that's simply a matter of how many days it takes to orbit the Sun but months/weeks are arbitary figures.

If we divide 365.25 by 10 we get (as near as damnit) 36.5 days, so we could divide the year into eight 36 day months and two 37 day ones.

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Nomad

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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #5 on: August 15, 2009, 09:48:34 AM »
Let's do it.  I've always thought the current measurement of time was confusing, and with my dyscalculia I always get counting money confused with seconds and hours ($.60 to a dollar?  It's gotten me more than once).  Reading analog clocks would be a billion times easier.

I'm also 100% for changing the US over to Metric.  Canada did it just fine.
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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #6 on: August 15, 2009, 04:04:46 PM »
Don't forget a lot of our timing systems are based off of astrology. So readjusting time to the decimal system would only really work for hours, minutes and seconds.

You mean astronomy, right? Because if it's astrology then I'm never using the Gregorian calendar again.

Yes, now stop being a douche.
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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #7 on: August 15, 2009, 06:25:26 PM »
i doubt we will ever change the system we use now. would we have to change legal documents, such as birth certificates, to reflect decimal or metric time. this may affect the length of work days or holidays. just seems like too much of a fiasco to me.
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Raist

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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #8 on: August 15, 2009, 06:32:55 PM »
Decimal time could work.

If we divide the day by 100 that gives us a unit of time equal to 14.4 roman Minutes let's call this base unit a Cent to begin with (Unless you've got a name which doesn't conflict with currency.) and into each cent can go 1000 units (Mils?) which would make each Mil = 0.86 seconds and into that as many other divisions as you need.

Now we have to keep the number of days in a year because that's simply a matter of how many days it takes to orbit the Sun but months/weeks are arbitary figures.

If we divide 365.25 by 10 we get (as near as damnit) 36.5 days, so we could divide the year into eight 36 day months and two 37 day ones.

You have to realize that unless you base all of your units off of a base unit you are not simplifying anything. You just eliminated any convenient unit of time below 15 minutes. so accuracy will drop horrendously unless we start using seconds for everything.


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Lord Wilmore

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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #9 on: August 16, 2009, 05:24:39 AM »
I like tradition, and I'm not sure that any of these systems would be more intuitive than the current one.
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Chris Spaghetti

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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #10 on: August 16, 2009, 06:05:24 AM »
Decimal time could work.

If we divide the day by 100 that gives us a unit of time equal to 14.4 roman Minutes let's call this base unit a Cent to begin with (Unless you've got a name which doesn't conflict with currency.) and into each cent can go 1000 units (Mils?) which would make each Mil = 0.86 seconds and into that as many other divisions as you need.

Now we have to keep the number of days in a year because that's simply a matter of how many days it takes to orbit the Sun but months/weeks are arbitary figures.

If we divide 365.25 by 10 we get (as near as damnit) 36.5 days, so we could divide the year into eight 36 day months and two 37 day ones.

You have to realize that unless you base all of your units off of a base unit you are not simplifying anything. You just eliminated any convenient unit of time below 15 minutes. so accuracy will drop horrendously unless we start using seconds for everything.


No, the base unit is 100ths and 100,000s of a day

For what it's worth I'm happy to keep our current system.

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Raist

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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #11 on: August 18, 2009, 06:33:39 PM »
Decimal time could work.

If we divide the day by 100 that gives us a unit of time equal to 14.4 roman Minutes let's call this base unit a Cent to begin with (Unless you've got a name which doesn't conflict with currency.) and into each cent can go 1000 units (Mils?) which would make each Mil = 0.86 seconds and into that as many other divisions as you need.

Now we have to keep the number of days in a year because that's simply a matter of how many days it takes to orbit the Sun but months/weeks are arbitary figures.

If we divide 365.25 by 10 we get (as near as damnit) 36.5 days, so we could divide the year into eight 36 day months and two 37 day ones.

You have to realize that unless you base all of your units off of a base unit you are not simplifying anything. You just eliminated any convenient unit of time below 15 minutes. so accuracy will drop horrendously unless we start using seconds for everything.


No, the base unit is 100ths and 100,000s of a day

For what it's worth I'm happy to keep our current system.

Yes, so you are basing it off of the day.

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Parsifal

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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #12 on: August 19, 2009, 08:39:36 AM »
Decimal time could work.

If we divide the day by 100 that gives us a unit of time equal to 14.4 roman Minutes let's call this base unit a Cent to begin with (Unless you've got a name which doesn't conflict with currency.) and into each cent can go 1000 units (Mils?) which would make each Mil = 0.86 seconds and into that as many other divisions as you need.

Now we have to keep the number of days in a year because that's simply a matter of how many days it takes to orbit the Sun but months/weeks are arbitary figures.

If we divide 365.25 by 10 we get (as near as damnit) 36.5 days, so we could divide the year into eight 36 day months and two 37 day ones.

I don't see the point of putting ten months in a year. You're never going to fit an integer power of ten days into a year, and any attempt to do so will only confuse people.

However, I am all for the conversion of the subintervals of the day to a decimal system of time. The second as the SI base unit makes no sense at all, because the smallest natural unit of time in human experience is the day and there are a wonderfully arbitrary 8.64 * 104 seconds in a day. This also means that the second (and subdivisisions thereof, such as the millisecond) is the only SI unit of time in common usage. The next one up is the kilosecond, but intervals of the order of a kilosecond are termed "fifteen minutes", a megasecond is approximated with a fortnight and half-centuries are far easier to understand than the gigasecond.

This makes time the only physical quantity for which non-SI units are still in common usage even when working in SI (except in certain disciplines which have invented their own arbitrary units such as astronomy, which is one reason I hope never to be an astronomer). If we switched to decimal time for SI purposes, we would be able to use SI units up to and including the day, and possibly even the decaday.
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markjo

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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #13 on: August 24, 2009, 11:18:36 AM »
i doubt we will ever change the system we use now. would we have to change legal documents, such as birth certificates, to reflect decimal or metric time. this may affect the length of work days or holidays. just seems like too much of a fiasco to me.

Not to mention all of the radios, computers and other electronics that run at certain cycles per second (Hz).
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Raist

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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #14 on: August 24, 2009, 11:37:19 AM »
The meter is also based off of the second. The second has become a standard all throughout metrics, if you change the second you would at least have to change the way other units are evaluated.

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Euclid

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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #15 on: August 24, 2009, 06:03:04 PM »
The meter is also based off of the second. The second has become a standard all throughout metrics, if you change the second you would at least have to change the way other units are evaluated.

It wouldn't be that big of deal to change it.  If the day was used as the SI base unit of time, it would be defined as 794243384928000 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.  The meter would then be defined as the distance traveled by light in 1/25902068371200 of a day.
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Raist

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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #16 on: August 24, 2009, 06:19:05 PM »
A day is just as arbitrary a unit as the second. It's also far too large to base the entire system off of.

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Euclid

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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #17 on: August 24, 2009, 06:21:35 PM »
A day is just as arbitrary a unit as the second. It's also far too large to base the entire system off of.

All units are arbitrary.
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sokarul

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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #18 on: August 24, 2009, 06:22:28 PM »
In the past the meter was already defined without time. 
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Raist

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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #19 on: August 24, 2009, 06:24:04 PM »
obviously.

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Parsifal

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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #20 on: August 24, 2009, 09:34:20 PM »
It wouldn't be that big of deal to change it.  If the day was used as the SI base unit of time, it would be defined as 794243384928000 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.  The meter would then be defined as the distance traveled by light in 1/25902068371200 of a day.

Units for velocity, momentum, acceleration, force, energy, power, torque, electric current, voltage, electric field strength, entropy and probably quite a few more that I'm forgetting depend on the base unit of time. If you redefine the base SI unit of time, you need to recalibrate every instrument measuring such a quantity.
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EvilToothpaste

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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #21 on: August 27, 2009, 08:10:36 AM »
It wouldn't be that big of deal to change it.  If the day was used as the SI base unit of time, it would be defined as 794243384928000 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom.  The meter would then be defined as the distance traveled by light in 1/25902068371200 of a day.

Units for velocity, momentum, acceleration, force, energy, power, torque, electric current, voltage, electric field strength, entropy and probably quite a few more that I'm forgetting depend on the base unit of time. If you redefine the base SI unit of time, you need to recalibrate every instrument measuring such a quantity.

Or get a calculator watch!

I'm going to digress slightly here.  Metric system is only marginally easier to use than English.  The only ease of use I have personally used is converting between cc's and litres (much easier in ones head than cu_ft to gallons).  Alright, I take that back: it's MUCH easier to convert between different units using metric.  But there is a problem with SI that Imperial does not have.  Here's a delightful anecdote:

Quote
I was in Montreal years ago, having dinner with a couple of carpenters who were visitin?g from near Paris. They were describing a brilliant technique whereby they had vastly simplified layout for their jobs. Instead of using 1 meter as a standard, one of them said, we use 1.2 meters. That way we hardly ever have to deal with decimal points, as 12 can be divided by 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, and itself.

And I said, "You mean, like the foot?"

And I swear, they both slapped their foreheads and made various French exclamations of astonishment. And the most significant thing for me was that they knew that the foot has twelve inches in it. They had just never considered that there might be a logical reason for it. But 1.2 meters, well, that made sense.

We had a very productive discussion that night, getting into the logic behind radical notions like sixteenths and eighths, which allow for useful increments of change, instead of the orders-of-magnitude leaps that the Metric system locks one into. And I told them about an old framing square I had, which was primarily in inches and fractions, but had a little hundredths scale in one corner. The idea here is that one can calculate the constants for things like rafter runs very precisely, in hundredths of an inch, then use a pair of calipers to find the nearest sixteenth or eighth, once the run had been multiplied out to full length. They got it right away, saw how the square makes use of decimals where they are useful for fine-grain tweeziness but lets the operator escape into easier- to-see-and-work-with fractions. And by the way, the 1.2 meters trick might be common in France, for all I know, as I have heard of it from other people. If so, it's a clear case of common sense finding a way to deal with what is only ostensible logic.

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Chris Spaghetti

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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #22 on: August 27, 2009, 09:10:28 AM »
Decimal time could work.

If we divide the day by 100 that gives us a unit of time equal to 14.4 roman Minutes let's call this base unit a Cent to begin with (Unless you've got a name which doesn't conflict with currency.) and into each cent can go 1000 units (Mils?) which would make each Mil = 0.86 seconds and into that as many other divisions as you need.

Now we have to keep the number of days in a year because that's simply a matter of how many days it takes to orbit the Sun but months/weeks are arbitary figures.

If we divide 365.25 by 10 we get (as near as damnit) 36.5 days, so we could divide the year into eight 36 day months and two 37 day ones.

You have to realize that unless you base all of your units off of a base unit you are not simplifying anything. You just eliminated any convenient unit of time below 15 minutes. so accuracy will drop horrendously unless we start using seconds for everything.


No, the base unit is 100ths and 100,000s of a day

For what it's worth I'm happy to keep our current system.

Yes, so you are basing it off of the day.

Yeah, as Robo said, it's the only non-arbitary measure of time we have

Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #23 on: August 27, 2009, 09:19:24 AM »
Yeah, Metric system isn't great.  It looks better, but it's not necessarily more practical.

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Parsifal

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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #24 on: August 27, 2009, 09:58:55 AM »
I'm going to digress slightly here.  Metric system is only marginally easier to use than English.  The only ease of use I have personally used is converting between cc's and litres (much easier in ones head than cu_ft to gallons).  Alright, I take that back: it's MUCH easier to convert between different units using metric.  But there is a problem with SI that Imperial does not have.  Here's a delightful anecdote:

Quote
I was in Montreal years ago, having dinner with a couple of carpenters who were visitin?g from near Paris. They were describing a brilliant technique whereby they had vastly simplified layout for their jobs. Instead of using 1 meter as a standard, one of them said, we use 1.2 meters. That way we hardly ever have to deal with decimal points, as 12 can be divided by 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, and itself.

And I said, "You mean, like the foot?"

And I swear, they both slapped their foreheads and made various French exclamations of astonishment. And the most significant thing for me was that they knew that the foot has twelve inches in it. They had just never considered that there might be a logical reason for it. But 1.2 meters, well, that made sense.

We had a very productive discussion that night, getting into the logic behind radical notions like sixteenths and eighths, which allow for useful increments of change, instead of the orders-of-magnitude leaps that the Metric system locks one into. And I told them about an old framing square I had, which was primarily in inches and fractions, but had a little hundredths scale in one corner. The idea here is that one can calculate the constants for things like rafter runs very precisely, in hundredths of an inch, then use a pair of calipers to find the nearest sixteenth or eighth, once the run had been multiplied out to full length. They got it right away, saw how the square makes use of decimals where they are useful for fine-grain tweeziness but lets the operator escape into easier- to-see-and-work-with fractions. And by the way, the 1.2 meters trick might be common in France, for all I know, as I have heard of it from other people. If so, it's a clear case of common sense finding a way to deal with what is only ostensible logic.

I would rather use a base 12 number system with base 12 metric prefixes, but unfortunately convention has left us with the mess we're in today. And while it is true that there are logical conversion factors between some imperial units, others are just silly - my personal favourite example of this is the mile, which contains 5280 feet. Also, the stone, which contains (I think) 14 pounds - no easier to work with than 10. I still think that, despite its flaws, SI is on the whole much simpler to use than imperial.
« Last Edit: August 27, 2009, 10:00:32 AM by Robosteve »
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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #25 on: August 27, 2009, 10:01:23 AM »
stones are stupid

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Chris Spaghetti

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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #26 on: August 27, 2009, 11:43:29 AM »
I like the old British imperial money

1 farthing  = 1/4 penny
A ha'penny = 1/2 penny
1 penny
Threepence or Thruppenny Bit = 3 pence
Sixpence) = 6 pence
1 shilling = 12 pence (1s)
1 florin = 2 shillings
A half-crown = 2 shillings and 6 pence
1 crown = 5 shillings = 1/4 pound
1 pound = 20 shillings = 240 pence (?1)
1 sovereign = a gold coin with a face value of one pound


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Raist

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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #27 on: August 27, 2009, 11:49:36 AM »
Decimal time could work.

If we divide the day by 100 that gives us a unit of time equal to 14.4 roman Minutes let's call this base unit a Cent to begin with (Unless you've got a name which doesn't conflict with currency.) and into each cent can go 1000 units (Mils?) which would make each Mil = 0.86 seconds and into that as many other divisions as you need.

Now we have to keep the number of days in a year because that's simply a matter of how many days it takes to orbit the Sun but months/weeks are arbitary figures.

If we divide 365.25 by 10 we get (as near as damnit) 36.5 days, so we could divide the year into eight 36 day months and two 37 day ones.

You have to realize that unless you base all of your units off of a base unit you are not simplifying anything. You just eliminated any convenient unit of time below 15 minutes. so accuracy will drop horrendously unless we start using seconds for everything.


No, the base unit is 100ths and 100,000s of a day

For what it's worth I'm happy to keep our current system.

Yes, so you are basing it off of the day.

Yeah, as Robo said, it's the only non-arbitary measure of time we have

It's completely arbitrary, the time it takes for the planet to complete a turn.

And then you are stuck trying to find a way to divide it by a unit of ten to get a useful amount of time. Also, almost no math requires the length of a day, meaning your base unit would be completely unused, and you would be stuck using things like microdays.

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EvilToothpaste

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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #28 on: August 27, 2009, 02:23:19 PM »
Definitely, my favorite measure for time is Fortnight.  Speed: furlong per fortnight.

As for using the duration of a day to define time: isn't the Earth's rotation continuously slowing because of the moon?  That wouldn't work for too long...  of course it has also been shown that the speed of light may have once traveled faster than it does now, so even the current definition of a second could also be changing. 

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Parsifal

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Re: Metric and Decimal Time
« Reply #29 on: August 27, 2009, 02:26:03 PM »
of course it has also been shown that the speed of light may have once traveled faster than it does now, so even the current definition of a second could also be changing. 

You mean the metre.
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