The Celestial Timekeepers
Maurizio Toscano
The University of Melbourne
The desire to distill from the cyclical motion of the heavens the essence
of precise and regular time has always been with us. Yet, since the advent
of the quantum mechanical age, strata of energy levels in an atomic world
- not the motion of macroscopic entities - have dominated our scientific
definition of time. There is, however, hope that time will again be expressed
through the motion of stars. Approaching the accuracy of atomic clocks,
contemporary celestial clocks take the form of rapidly rotating stars known
as Pulsars. Here, we examine the social consequences of a return to celestial
timekeeping.