How and why Bezos builds a clock for 10,000 years

    If you are rich, you buy Rolex for $ 42,000. But if you are the richest person in the world, you build your own $ 42 million hours. Such a project is implemented by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon with a fortune of $ 120 billion. A giant clock, which he believes will be able to stand longer than human civilization. Yesterday evening the billionaire announced that the assembly of a unique device, the development of technologies for the creation of which was carried out for 12 years, finally started. The first 150-meter-high mechanism was installed deep in the hollowed hollows of one of the mountains in Texas.




    alizar has already posted in the form of news (it is not ahead of him!). We have a little more extended - about where this project came from and why so many of the world's best people spend their time on it.



    Danny Hillis came up with the idea of ​​a clock in 1986, and spent more than 15 years developing their design.

    The idea of ​​watches to the public was proposed by inventor Danny Hillis in 1995 - as a way to make people think about the future of the planet.


    I want to build a clock that ticks once a year. The arrow walks once in 100 years, and the cuckoo leaves once a millennium.



    Hillis made a small prototype, began to work on designs, published his thoughts in newspapers. As a result, more than 3,300 people sponsored this crazy venture, and she grew up in the project Clock of the Long Now. Danny Hillis and his organization were even able to create a working version of the clock at a scale of 1: 100.



    First prototype

    And in 2005, Bezos became interested in the project, a good friend of Hillis, who perfectly understood “the importance of planning for long-term projects”. For example, in 2002, Bezos opened the Long Bets forum , fixing predictions for many years to come, and allowing to bet on them. Recently, Warren Buffett’s bid that simply investing in the S & P 500 index for 10 years will show more income than hedge funds won and $ 2,222,278 went to his chosen charity (in support of the girls of Omaha).


    With Bezos's money, the team moved from prototyping to creating a complete model. Under the direction of Hillis, engineers began creating giant stainless steel gears, which required several hundred for the project. They were given permission to mine a mountain (standing on the personal territory of Bezos with an area of ​​770 km 2 , 7 times the size of Paris). And now - the drilling is completed, and the first components of the giant colossus begin to insert deep into these vertical caves.



    One "detail"

    The main part of the clock will be installed directly under the ridge line, so that the mechanism will be maximally protected on each side. To reach it, a person will first have to climb the mountain, and then find the entrance to the “secret” tunnel (you can imagine the gate of Moria from the “Lord of the Rings”). Inside - complete silence. Only somewhere far above, a massive pendulum swings, thanks to which the clock counts every 10 seconds (but you will not hear it and you will not see it - the device tries not to waste energy on such trifles).


    Bezos and The Long Now team constantly compare the project with the Egyptian pyramids. This is a huge engineering task, showing what knowledge mankind has at this stage of its development. The pyramids have stood for 4500 years. The watches will have to work more than two times longer, not to mention the subtlety of the parts that they use. Ten thousand years ago, our ancestors just started the transition from hunting and picking berries to agriculture (by the way, it is now assumed that they were the first to grow pumpkins to use them on the road as bottles). What will happen in ten thousand years - who knows? Maybe then other beings will live on the planet, and the clock in grief will be the only reminder of our civilization.



    Work on the "watch out of the mountain." Early 2000s

    That is why the project is worth all the money invested in it. So that people have a reason to think about such things. Danny Hillis explains:


    You have an idea about the pyramids. This is what unites you with the past. But we have nothing for the future. We do not have a symbol that unites us with the future. I think the world needs it. It is interesting, it is fun, it makes us more human.



    Thanks to the pyramids, now the average man in the street knows much more about Ancient Egypt than about Babylon, the Vedic civilization or the Sumerians. Perhaps, in the future, they will also talk about us as "about the people who built those strange hours." At least Bezos, Hillis, and their associates think about it.



    Mechanisms


    In 2010, contractors began to cast three three-meter stainless steel gears and Maltese mechanisms that will ring the bells. Meanwhile, computers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Labs spent months calculating the position of the sun in the sky at noon every day for the next 10,000 years. These watches will then be used for self-correction so that their counting will always be accurate.



    Specially designed giant metal arm capable of cutting rock

    In 2011, excavations began in the desert in Texas, where one of the watch mechanisms will be installed deep underground. The builders drilled horizontal tunnels at the base of the mountain, and a “test” hole 150 meters long from the top, until it crossed the tunnels. There they installed a moving platform with a 2.5-ton mechanical arm, with a special saw at the end capable of carving a stone. She began to slowly go up, step by step, cutting out a spiral staircase that people (workers who assemble the remaining parts of the mechanism) could go down.




    At the same time, the final prototype of “ Clock of the Long Now ” was exhibited in one of the museums of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. The watch consists of huge metal gears, a giant load of stone and a precisely calibrated titanium trigger in a protective quartz box.




    There were many ideas about what can be used to fuel this mechanism. Most sources of energy did not fit. For example, nuclear fuel did not suit the developers for two reasons: it is not restored, and Hillis did not want to leave such a reminder of humanity. As a result, the clock is fed in three ways. First, the visitor can "twist" the lever to find out the time. This mechanical action lifts the load, gives it some potential energy. Secondly, some parts of the clock are able to collect energy from the sun. In the south of the mountain there will be a window with a hole of synthetic sapphire glass, which at noon will heat the air in the chamber and move the graphite cylinder. This will help to adjust the time on the clock and give a small charge of energy for the pendulum.


    Thirdly, even if the lever had not been manually twisted for centuries, the watch uses the difference between day and night temperatures at the top of the mountain to collect energy to continue counting time.



    Dial (in prototype)

    The dial does not display the current hours and minutes. Instead, when you approach it, you will see the time, date, and the location of the sun, stars, and planets from the last time someone manually charged the clock - even if it was three hundred years ago. To look at the current time, it will be necessary (perhaps a very long time!) To rotate the wheel, charging the clock and moving the arrows forward, until they automatically stop at the current moment.




    A mechanical computer with Maltese mechanisms is in charge of the chimes. It can generate a new tune every day for 10,000 years. The famous British composer Brian Eno worked on these melodies, which are “knocked out” of ten bells . Basically, the clock will play when the visitor "unwind" them. But from time to time - and independently, even if there is no one in the mountain who could hear them.



    What for?


    Some journalists say that this is just a big PR project. Like, everyone knows that Bezos competes with Mask. His space company, Blue Origin, which exists solely on the billionaire's money (without NASA support), launched several shuttles into space, but without much interest from the media. And the announcement of the construction of clocks for ten millennia did not accidentally come literally a couple of weeks after the Mask car was launched into space. So the head of Amazon wants to try to switch just a little attention to himself and to his achievements. Moreover, the mountain with the clock stands directly opposite the spaceport, from which Blue Origin launches its reusable launch vehicles.




    Bezos himself does not respond to such comments. He says that his only task is to make humanity think not in years or decades, but on a scale that really means something. Only in this way can people achieve something. To illustrate this, he gives a problem to solve:

    Suppose you would need to eliminate the problem of world hunger over the next 5 years. How would you start to solve it? It's just impossible, right? We cannot solve problems of this scale in a short time, no matter how hard we try. But what if they give you 200 years? You will have a chance.


    More importantly, you would start thinking about the problem from a different angle. You would start from the roots, come to it globally. Your actions would not be aimed at improving the lives of your contemporaries, but at taking care of people who will appear over the centuries. It seems to me that it is time for us to start thinking in such categories.




    Many call the financing of The Long Now watches one of Jeff Bezos’s most eccentric and strange antics, and doubt that the project’s objectives are achievable. To which the billionaire replies:


    This is the smartest thing I've ever done in my life.

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