by perihelions on 12/27/24, 6:53 PM
The simplest solution is to uplift a polite portion of the Earth's mass into an orbital habitation ring, and use a feedback controller to regulate the amounts being launched, to keep the rotational period stabilized (in accordance with conservation of angular momentum) at an integer ratio to the sidereal year.
And for the other challenge, to stabilize the variation of the the sidereal year (i.e. the gravities of Jupiter &c. pulling the orbit slightly faster or slower), we simply schedule the launches at either the fore- (morning) or aft- (evening) ends.
To anyone sympathetic to my ideology, please consider using "fore", "aft", "port", and "starboard" to refer to the morning, evening, day, and night quadrants of the clock.
by VHRanger on 12/27/24, 6:55 PM
I agree, moving the earth's axis with respect to the sun seems actually feasible compared to getting a standards body to agree on coordinated change.
by smitty1e on 12/27/24, 6:52 PM
The title refers to a 1729 Jonathan Swift essay, "A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People from Being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick"[1].
As with the subject article, Swift's work begins reasonably enough, and contains much great discussion before veering off wildly at the end.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal
by 3eb7988a1663 on 12/27/24, 6:44 PM
The ratio is around 365.2422. Calling it 365 is too crude. Julius Caesar said we should call it 365 1/4, and that was good enough for a while.
This is blowing my mind that thousands of years ago they were able to measure the orbits to this level of accuracy.
by s_tec on 12/27/24, 6:34 PM
This is an excellent idea! It would probably make the most sense to perform these adjustments on April 1.
by emptiestplace on 12/27/24, 6:49 PM
Wish I'd known about Swift's 'A Modest Proposal' first - I came expecting practical Unix time insights, but found an attempt at satire in need of both editing and purpose.
by ncruces on 12/27/24, 6:52 PM
Leap seconds are about keeping 12pm synchronized with solar noon, not the length of the year?
This makes no sense:
> … or not add leap seconds and allow the year to drift with respect to the day.
by douglaswlance on 12/27/24, 6:55 PM
if we mobilized a whole-of-society effort to build millions of rocket engines and fired them year round, it'd only take a few hundred years to get this done
by devjab on 12/27/24, 6:57 PM
If we’re changing unix time we should probably do something about the year 2038 problem. It’ll not be nearly as fun as new years in 2000.
by Retr0id on 12/27/24, 6:52 PM
we could fix timezones too, by rearranging the continents (and the civilizations within them) into a narrow longitudinal strip
by rzzzt on 12/27/24, 6:54 PM
Solar sails? Dyson sphere? Do we need to run in the same direction in a coordinated fashion?
by dvh on 12/27/24, 7:02 PM
If you have problem with Unix time you are probably using it wrong. It is monotonically rising timer that increments every second. That's it. It doesn't care about leap second, leap years or any of the orbits.
by gavindean90 on 12/27/24, 6:51 PM
This is like an xkcd comic as a blog post
by silvestrov on 12/27/24, 6:52 PM