What is the Definition of a Second?
For those who endeavor to be as precise as possible, it should be noted that if you are referring to the unit of time known as a second, you are talking about “the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom,” according to the General Conference on Weights and Measurements.
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I’ll Be There in a Jiffy. Start Your Stopwatch
A “jiffy” is more precise in its definition than you may have thought. The earliest technical usage was defined by Gilbert Newton Lewis (1875–1946). He defined the “jiffy” as the time it takes light to travel one centimeter in a vacuum (approximately 33.3564 picoseconds). It has since been redefined for different measurements depending on the…
Feeling Old? Tell People Your Age in Galactic Years
A galactic year (also known as a cosmic year) is the amount of time it takes for our solar system to orbit the center of the Milky Way. Traveling at 514,000 mph relative to the galaxy’s center, that works out to between 225 million and 250 million years in one orbit. To put it in…
Listen to the Song that Takes 639 Years to Play
UPDATED ON MAY 6, 2021 The longest musical performance in history is currently taking place in the church of St. Burchardi in Halberstadt, Germany. The performance of John Cage’s “Organ²/ASLSP (As Slow As Possible)” started on Sept. 5, 2001, and is set to finish in 2640. The first part of the song lacks a little…
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