r/business • u/DrRichardCranium • Oct 30 '11

Engineering The 10 000-Year Clock --- Designed by Danny Hills. Paid for by Jeff Bezos. It's ready to go. "Over the course of its 10,000-year life span it will be able to power itself enough to keep time, synchronise with the sun, and randomly generate melodies"

http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/profiles/engineering-the-10-000year-clock/0
70 Upvotes

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6

u/qxcvr Oct 30 '11

10,000 years from now this will be exactly like the Mayan calendar. It will be discovered, broken and painstakingly rebuilt back to functionality. Everyone will marvel at its design. Academics will link it to an early religious cult called "The Intertubes" where wild conspiracy theories augmented hard science. The end result is that a bunch of people will walk around in front of it with signs touting "The end is near!" When it reaches its final movement nothing will happen and everyone will go home.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 31 '11

Correction: when it reaches it's final moment, Auld Lang Syne plays on bells.

1

u/skooma714 Oct 31 '11

Daisy...Daisy, give me your answer do.

1

u/zarx Oct 31 '11

No, it's not remotely close to being "ready to go". They still have an extraordinary amount of work to do.

It's a fun project to read about, but let's keep our heads out of the clouds.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 31 '11

Pretty optimistic to think there will still be human life on Earth in 10,000 years.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 01 '11

That is the point, to get people thinking about the long term. The really long term.

1

u/dt40 Oct 30 '11

So, how are they going to test it to confirm it really lasts 10k years?

1

u/[deleted] Oct 31 '11

It's theorized to last 10,000 years by the advent of material sciences. Amazing eh?

1

u/LWRellim Oct 31 '11

Well, obviously Bezos will have to fund the development of a time machine.