© Long Now FoundatioThe 10,000 Year Clock
The clock is 500 feet tall and powered by the Earth's thermal cycles, Bezos said in a tweet Tuesday.
"It's a special Clock, designed to be a symbol, an icon for long-term thinking," a blog post signed by Bezos says.
The clock has been in the works for nearly three decades, according to the post, and is designed to tick once a year. The century hand advances once every 100 years, and the cuckoo comes out on the millennium.
The project was initiated by Danny Hillis in 1989. Bezos said he's been "helping Danny with the project for the last half dozen years."
Carved into the mountain are five room-sized anniversary chambers, each marking one year, 10 years, 100 years, 1,000 years, and 10,000 years. This image shows a workman polishing parts of the steel and titanium mechanism
© Long Now FoundationPrototype of the Long Now Foundation 10,000 year clock.
Reader Comments
That's useless.
These billionaires...they could have come up with s better idea than that...a five hundred foot fidget spinner would have better.
A raincoat for fish.
Nose hair tweezers for mice.
A clock--jezus Christ on a cracker...and on the inside of a mountain.
How we gonna tell what time it is....
Horsehockey dickory dock,
Jeff Bezos ran up a clock,
The clock hit 42 million,
Jeff Bezos ran down,
Horsehockey dickory dock.
This is just a timepiece, as far as we are being told.
the second for Chase
What it could be I can only assume.
Coincidentally I've heard in the news today, than a certain city in my country will open (or rather: reopen) a watchmaker class in a school. Probably thanks to initiative of some clockwork-lovers, not because of real need, but maybe they know something...
I remember reading about a group of engineering students tasked with designing a long clock which could last through many centuries. It's a surprisingly difficult challenge, given that all kinds of things can happen over the time period, (floods, ice, earth quakes, plants, fungus, or planetary wobble throwing things off, etc. Even scavengers or city planners, depending on how things go for our civilization, could bring a hopeful set of great gears to a halt). My bet is that the Bezos clock will fail.
Attacking the problem has practical application, too, in a side-long sort of way; how do you solve the problem of sending a message deep into the future on a planet which aggressively *eats* technology? That's why there is so little to be found from previous civilizations. Very little survives the journey through 'time'. Trying to solve this kind of problem might inspire ideas to indicate where and what to look for when exploring the deep past.
Because I'd bet that, buried somewhere on the planet, the fruits of some long dead team of engineers attempt at solving the same puzzle are either ticking or moldering away...