2026-09-18T22:16:51Zhttps://dspace.mit.edu/server/oai/requestoai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/1289852025-10-27T18:00:45Zcom_1721.1_7582com_1721.1_7581col_1721.1_131023
Tom Levenson.
Hendrickson, Jessica(Jessica L.)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Comparative Media Studies.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Graduate Program in Science Writing.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Program in Comparative Media Studies/Writing
2021-01-05T23:11:23Z
2021-01-05T23:11:23Z
2020
2020
https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/128985
1227040740
Thesis: S.M. in Science Writing, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Comparative Media Studies/Writing, 2020
Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 13-15).
A few blinks of an eye. The time it takes a hummingbird to flap its wings 80 times. For a photon of light to travel from Los Angeles to New York and back almost 40-fold. The second has been there since the literal dawn of time, if one exists. But what defines the second? Like a pop star constantly reinventing themselves, the second has undertaken a myriad of identities, first defined as a brief moment in the daily rotation of the earth around its axis. Today, the second is officially defined by over 9 billion oscillations of a cesium atom. Although it has changed costumes, its astronomical roots still ground the second. These definitions, these identities are projected onto it by an ever-curious, ever-demanding fan base. These fans are, of course, us - humans living in a complex, evolving society. They have been priests, farmers, scientists. Now, whatever our relationship is to one tick of the second hand, today we are beholden to this new, atomic second far beyond matters of time. Our entire technological infrastructure, from airplanes to smartphones, televisions to stock markets, driving directions to space research, would crumble without the atomic second and the 21st century horologists that build the timekeepers of the modern second: the atomic clock.
by Jessica Hendrickson.
S.M. in Science Writing
S.M.inScienceWriting Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Comparative Media Studies/Writing
15 pages ;
eng
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.
http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582
Comparative Media Studies.
Graduate Program in Science Writing.
A biography of the second
Thesis
application/pdf
2021-01-05T23:11:22Z
Publication
Master
CMS
unknown
unknown
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<Abstract>A few blinks of an eye. The time it takes a hummingbird to flap its wings 80 times. For a photon of light to travel from Los Angeles to New York and back almost 40-fold. The second has been there since the literal dawn of time, if one exists. But what defines the second? Like a pop star constantly reinventing themselves, the second has undertaken a myriad of identities, first defined as a brief moment in the daily rotation of the earth around its axis. Today, the second is officially defined by over 9 billion oscillations of a cesium atom. Although it has changed costumes, its astronomical roots still ground the second. These definitions, these identities are projected onto it by an ever-curious, ever-demanding fan base. These fans are, of course, us - humans living in a complex, evolving society. They have been priests, farmers, scientists. Now, whatever our relationship is to one tick of the second hand, today we are beholden to this new, atomic second far beyond matters of time. Our entire technological infrastructure, from airplanes to smartphones, televisions to stock markets, driving directions to space research, would crumble without the atomic second and the 21st century horologists that build the timekeepers of the modern second: the atomic clock.</Abstract>
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