Where is the 10000 year clock

Type keyword s to search. Today's Top Stories. Why the U. Could Best China in the Indo-Pacific. The 9 Best Robotics Kits for Kids. The huge mechanical clock ticks once per year and chimes once per millennium. Jeff Bezos and a millionaire scientist friend are building the clock on Bezos's property in Texas. As I see it, humans are now technologically advanced enough that we can create not only extraordinary wonders but also civilization-scale problems.

We're likely to need more long-term thinking. Visiting the Clock will take a commitment. The nearest airport is several hours away by car, and the foot trail to the Clock is rugged, rising almost 2, feet above the valley floor.

Building a Clock inside a remote mountain is a big task. Construction is under way, and we're making progress every day. This is the way you'll initially enter the series of tunnels and chambers that we're creating within the mountain. Bit serial adder Below the planetary display, each bit serial adder controls one element of the display, the orrery, each of them corresponding to calculate that planet's orbit.

The orrery is a spin-off project and the result of brainstorming for the clock, and was completed in The Equation of Time Cam measures the difference in these two times and recalibrates the clock, while also correcting for the Earth's axis wobble and 1 second per century decrease in speed. Geneva Wheels Using a progressive algorithm, large star-shaped plates, called Geneva Wheels, running down the center of the clock will generate a different bell ringing order for each day of the next 10, years.

Solar synchronizer Sunlight striking a wire will allow this solar synchronizer to make minute adjustments and realign the clock's absolute time pendulum with true solar time. Nickel-titanium wire The sunlight shining through the glass lens at precisely noon is focused onto the nickel-titanium wire below which contracts when heated by the sun syncing the clock's absolute time pendulum with true solar time.

Scale model This small scale model of the clock shows the plans for the stair in relation to what is planned to eventually be the foot clock tower. Helical weight drives Power for the clock will come from two huge helical weight drives on the sides of the clock.

While the mechanical principles behind these are hundreds of years old, the Long Now Foundation patented a rewind system to be used in the clock. This one is much easier to wind because the dial motion consumes less power than ringing bells.

You start winding and the calendar wheels whirr until BING, it stops and it shows the current date and time. So how does the Clock keep going if no one visits it for months, or years, or perhaps decades? If it is let to run down between visits, who would keep resetting it?

The Clock is designed to run for 10, years even if no one ever visits although it would not display the correct time till someone visited. If there is no attention for long periods of time the Clock uses the energy captured by changes in the temperature between day and night on the mountain top above to power its time-keeping apparatus.

In a place like a top of a mountain, this diurnal difference of tens of degrees in temperature is significant and thus powerful. Thermal power has been used for small mantel clocks before, but it has not been done before at this scale. The differential power is transmitted to the interior of the Clock by long metal rods. As long as the sun shines and night comes, the Clock can keep time itself, without human help.

If the sun shines through the clouds more often than expected, and if the nights are colder than usual, the extra power generated by this difference beyond what is ordinarily needed to nudge the pendulum will bleed over into the Clock weights. That means that over time, in ideal conditions, the sun will actually wind up the chimes, and wind them up sufficiently for them to ring when no one is there. The rotating dials, gears, spinning governor, and internal slips of pins and slots within the Clock will be visible only if you bring your own light.

The meager dot of light above is not sufficient to see much otherwise. Lights off, the Clock sits in near total darkness, talking to itself in slow clicks, for perhaps years at a time. In the darkness you can hear things moving, crisp non-random pings, like a crude thought trying to form inside a dim unlit brain.

The pendulum, which governs the timing of the Clock, is a 6-feet-long titanium assembly terminating with football-sized titanium weights. It swings at a satisfyingly slow second period. The slight clicks of its escapement echo loudly in the silence of the mountain. Building something to last 10, years requires both a large dose of optimism and a lot of knowledge. How do you keep it accurate when no one is around? Almost any kind of artifact can last 10 millennia if stored and cared for properly.

We have examples of 5,year-old wood staffs, papyrus, or leather sandals. On the other hand, even metal can corrode in a few years of rain. The mountain top in Texas and Nevada is a high dry desert, and below, in the interior tunnel, the temperature is very even over seasons and by the day 55 degrees F — another huge plus for longevity since freeze-thaw cycles are as corrosive as water.

Dry, dark and stable temperatures are what archivists love. Still, the Clock is a machine with moving parts, and parts wear down and lubricants evaporate or corrode. Most of the Clock will be made in a marine grade stainless steel. The main worry of the Clockmakers is that elements of a 10K-year Clock — by definition — will move slowly. The millennial dial creeps so slowly it can be said to not move at all during your lifetime.

Metals in contact with each other over those time scales can fuse — defeating the whole purpose of an ongoing timepiece. Dissimilar metals in contact can eat each other in galvanic corrosion. To counteract these tendencies some of the key moving parts of the Clock are non-metal — they are stone and hi-tech ceramics.

Ceramics will outlast most metals. We have found shards of clay pots 17, years old. And modern ceramics can be as hard as diamonds. All the bearings in the Clock will be engineered ceramic. Because these bearings are so hard, and rotate at very low speed, they require no lubrication — which normally attracts grit and eventually cause wear. There is more than just technology in the mountain. The ticks of time are a very human invention. Astronomical calendars are among the first pieces of culture, and often the mark of civilizations.

The cave holds culture.