Fun With Units (or I am 5.8 nanoseconds Tall)

The other morning over coffee my colleagues and I started talking about measurements, and it occurred to us that we could express our heights (or lengths) differently. All we needed were constants that would allow us to convert our commonly expressed height, in meters, into something else. Of course, we immediately thought of c, the speed of light in a vacuum, as one such constant.

Light is one of those intriguing things because its speed is a constant – no matter where you are in the universe, no matter how fast your are moving, within your (inertial) reference frame, you will always measure the same speed for light. This doesn't hold true for most other items that we measure: Sound, objects: the speed of each is always relative to our speed when we measure them. This makes light unique.

The International Bureau of Standards has defined the speed of light to be exactly 299,792,458 meters per second. As Neil Degrasse-Tyson wryly observes* 'if improvements to our means of measuring the speed of light lead to refinements, it is the length of a meter that will change, not our expression for the speed'.

So, taking my commonly expressed height in meters and dividing by c, (meters per second), the meters cross out, and you are left with a value of just seconds. 1.74 meters / 299,792,458 meters / second gives us the value of 5.8 nanoseconds (billionths of a second). This represents the time it would take a photon of light to travel from my head to my feet (or how much older my feet are by the time I observe them with my eyes.)

But, is it valid to express my height thus? I think so. Light is the only entity that moves with constant speed, and, in recognition of this fact, we are constantly redefining our other expressions of measurement from the various facets of light (we use the number of wavelengths emitted by a cesium atom to determine time, for instance, emitted wavelengths being the inverse of the speed of light and the energy of the particular atom). So, although not common, expressing my height in seconds isn't ambiguous, which is what we would want to avoid.

It is also nice in that it gives us a reminder of just how fast light moves, but that it isn't instantaneous. We could apply this to other items as well: An average 6^th grader is 5.1 nanoseconds tall, a 1^st grader almost 4.1 nanoseconds. An Olympic Swimming pool is 167 nanoseconds, a soccer field twice that.

Hoover Dam is 221 meters tall, or 737 nanoseconds tall. So, the splashes of water you see while standing on top of the dam occurred, literally, 737 nanoseconds before you see them, and have already changed shape and location by the time you become conscience of them!

Henceforth, I am 5.8 nanoseconds tall – How tall (in seconds) are you?

* Tyson. 'Death By Black Hole and other Cosmic Quandaries'

Another Term?

I had an interesting conversation with a couple of co-workers today. We were discussing the potential for changes to our country's laws to eliminate the discrimination against gays and lesbians with regards to marriage.

Now, I've a long time felt that justice should be blind, and a blind application of our current marriage laws would not even ask the gender of the applicants – just the basics: Are you currently married? Are you of age? Do you consent? (Are you not too closely related?)

However, I've also felt that the term marriage is so embedded in our lexicon, in our society that we will have to continue to use it to describe the exclusive partnership that is two people coming together to share, care for and love each other. We will continue to go to the local government to obtain our Marriage License, we will still have the overseer of our ceremony sign the Marriage Certificate to show to all that we have publicly affirmed the required vows.

What was interesting in my co-workers' view was that the term marriage is not that central to our concepts: They maintained that the majority of America would be willing to jettison the term if it meant creating equality before the law for all. That instead of having marriage and 'skim milk' unions, we could simply (for the purposes of the law) replace 'marriage' with some other term, and re-write our current laws to eliminate the discrimination of asking the applicants if they represent one of each sex.

In this implementation, 'marriage' and 'wedding' would be non-legal terms reserved for use whenever and however people wished, but the set of laws that governed co-ownership, rights of survivorship, divorce, would collectively be referred to under a separate term – we would get a 'Legal Union' License, have a 'Legal Union' Certificate signed by the proper witness.

I find this intriguing for a couple of reasons. Number one, it eliminates the the arguments of many that 'marriage' is something that cannot be defined by our democratic legal system; i.e., if we take 'marriage' out of the legal lexicon and no longer use it to refer to a set of laws, they cannot argue that we have redefined it or dirtied it, etc. Want to use 'marriage' to refer to something specific? Fine. Our laws don't recognize 'marriage' as a legal construct, so use it as you wish.

Second, I find it intriguing simply because I had not considered that it would be a possibility – that Americans were ready to remove the term from our legal system and simply move on. My co-workers give more credit to the ingrained fairness and lack of historical concern to our fellow citizens. So I am curious: Are they correct? Are we ready to just drop this whole affair, rename our laws, restore the veil of blindness to justice, and move on?

One of the unsolved points will be, of course, what terms do we use to refer to the collection of laws that currently govern the union of two individuals? I used 'Legal Union' above as place-holders only, not suggested replacements. One co-worker suggested we appeal to our Latin roots, and use terms such as 'Nodus' (Knot), Ligo (Bind), or perhaps (and our favorite): Caveo (Beware)!

Try them out! Does it work? Imagine our children going to City Hall to get their Nodus License, signing their Ligo Certificate, or perhaps, exchanging their vows in an elaborate Caveo Ceremony (after presenting their license and completing with the solemn signing of the Caveo Certificate.)

Are we ready for that? Is this really a simpler solution to moving forward towards Equality Before The Law with regards to two-person joinings? If we just sweep aside the freighted term, can we achieve the fairness we seek and believe we should give to every member of society?