Far from any airport, nestled in the Sierra Diablo range along the Texas-Mexico border, a 500-foot-tall clock is gradually taking form. In a world where atomic clocks can tick billions of times each second, this colossal timepiece is designed to tick just once per year—and to continue doing so for 10,000 years.
The 10,000 Year Clock was conceived by inventor Danny Hillis, who first envisioned it in 1986 as a means to inspire long-term thinking about humanity's distant future. After a decade of design work, Hillis and the San Francisco-based Long Now Foundation he co-founded are now constructing and installing the clock inside a mountain owned by Amazon and Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos, who has contributed $42 million to the project.
Last week, Bezos shared a time-lapse video on Twitter showing the clock's construction, describing it as “a symbol for long-term thinking.”
The foundation's website explains the clock's purpose through a series of thought-provoking questions: “If you have a Clock ticking for 10,000 years what kinds of generational-scale projects will it suggest? If a Clock can keep going for ten millennia, shouldn’t we make sure our civilization does as well? If the Clock keeps going after we are personally long dead, why not attempt other projects that will request future generations to finish?”
The clock will be powered by giant gears housed within a shaft in the mountain, drawing thermal energy from the temperature changes caused by the day/night cycle above. Visitors who undertake the challenging hike to the site can also wind the clock manually.
According to a blog post by Bezos, a century hand will advance once every hundred years, and a cuckoo will emerge once every thousand years. The mechanism will also include ten bells and a “melody generator” created by rock musician Brian Eno, designed to produce a unique chime pattern each time the bells ring.
No completion date has been set for the clock, but it has already captured the imagination of many, including theoretical physicist Lee Smolin, author of “Time Reborn: From the Crisis in Physics to the Future of the Universe.” As he told NBC News MACH in an email, “The clock of the Long Now impels us to wonder how we will live as far in the future as we are from the beginnings of cities, far beyond the spans it will take to solve all the problems that occupy our thoughts now… If the clock can be built, it may inspire the imaginations of billions of people.”
Source www.nbcnews.com
