Good SA news, bad SA news, and a tiny bit of science news

More behind the break...

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The science first: A new clock is so exact, that it may end up utterly unusable for...

You know, actually telling time.

The original article, recommended to me by my friend and editor AppleTank, and probebly does a better job at explaining it than I may...

But in short, the precision of 0.0000000000000001 seconds (!) is such, that such a clock notices the relativistic time difference if you so much lay it down on the floor.

As such these cesium clocks might one day be marvelous tools for gravity measuring, and who knows what else...

You know, except tell us time in any practical fashion.

Doubt they will show up in official anything in SA, but I'd thought I'd share what AppleTank had to say on the subject:

Hmm. Better hope your cyborgs don't have clocks that accurate. Might give some guy with OCD a headache.

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And on to SA itself.

Over the last two-three weeks, I've written nearly 60 000 - 70 000 words (!) for SA!

...And about 90% of that is future chapters and stuff that won't show for many, many months more.

...Still, sometime in 2015-2016 the updates are going to start coming really, really fast!

*Cough.*

Mixed news aside, I just thought you all might want an update. Work is ongoing, I just still don't have much to show on your end for it quite yet.

Comments

[Xanathar]

Hmm. Better hope your cyborgs don't have clocks that accurate. Might give some guy with OCD a headache.

Also I'm sure there are problems of overflow and/or machine epsilon somewhere.

Over the last two-three weeks, I've written nearly 60 000 - 70 000 words (!) for SA!

Oh! You are tease!

[AppleTank]

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Yeeeah. All future stuff, where shit hits fan.

[Lord Of Dorkness]

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Shhh...

Spoilers make baby-Applejack cry.

fc07.deviantart.net/fs71/i/2013/289/9/c/crying_foal_applejack_by_coltsteelstallion-d6qp2fe.png

And that is a terrible sight indeed.

[Shpoople96]

Quantum clocks are far more precise. Quote:

In February 2010, NIST physicists built a second, enhanced, version of the single aluminum atom quantum logic clock using a Be+logic ion instead of the a Mg ion . Considered the world's most precise clock, it offers more than twice the precision of the original, losing one second in 3.7 billion years.

[Clay]

Oh come on! 60 freakin thousand succulent words that I dont get to enjoy! You are a bigger tease than my english teacher who has this jolly rancher sent thing on her air vents! GAH!

Anyway, so how long is it gonna be in total?

[Lord Of Dorkness]

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Actually, from what I understood this is a new version of just that, just with a 'bit' of strontium instead of aluminium.

I mixed it up with the cesium based America's Master Clock and that one is the 0.0000000000000001 sec one.

They don't even write out that figure for the new one, but there was this line:

This new clock can keep perfect time for 5 billion years.

"It's about the whole, entire age of the earth," says Jun Ye, the scientist here at JILA who built this clock. "Our aim is that we'll have a clock that, during the entire age of the universe, would not have lost a second."

So my bad on that bit of reading comprehension.

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Anyway, so how long is it gonna be in total?

My current out-line + drafts/prototype chapters is at 25-27 chapters, and I'm aiming at the 10 000 - 20 000 words range on them all.

That's roughly to the end of act two of four-five, or thereabout, but past that point most things except the high-lights and ending are still something I'm working out.

So... yeah. Quite the doorstop, but I can't say exact numbers yet.