Re: Universal Measures

On Fri, 2 Oct 1998, Carlos Thompson wrote:

> Lets take a well defined radiation period of one element, probably hydrogen,
> and the lenght light travels in that period in vacuum, those would be our
> basic measures of both time and lengh: an hydrogen time, and a light
> hydrogen time.
I like using hydrogen as a basis very much, since it is the only really
universal thing.  (i.e. water, is abundant on earth, but not space, just
like humans).  BTW- do you know off hand how long and how far these are?

> Let use base two for derivatives.  If we wouldn't have ten fingers we
> wouldn't use base ten.  As we take basic derivatives for thousans, the new
> basic derivatives would be powers of 2^8.
I prefer base 4.  If it weren't for digital computers, we wouldn't be
thinking binary:)  Base 4 is more compact to write, but still doesn't
require too many symbols.  It also has an application to quantum computing
and also is the number of DNA bases, (is that right?) the unique segments
of DNA that make up earth-life.  But bases aren't the point of this
topic:)

> Mass would be derived from a proton mass and electric load from the electron
> load.
And temperature based on the boiling point of H?  0 = absolute zero, 1 =
the boiling point?  This probably could be derived from electronic energy
as well.

> The problem is such measures (but probaly lenght) would be to small for
> humans, (a proton mass is 1/6.02x10^23 g so our body masses would be around
> 2^95 proton masses.
Writing that many bits sucks, but if the common prefixes were for the
units were accomodating for that, i.e. if a shmo-proton-mass was 2^96
proton masses, just like the metric kilo-gram is 10^3 grams, I don't think
it would be that awkward.  You'd just be used to the prefixed (or
whatever) forms.