Time, Perception and Major Longitude – Times Standard

A few days ago, I posted an update on the Redwood Coast Tsunami Working Group Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/RCTWG/). A magnitude 5.5 earthquake struck on June 3 near Ridgecrest in southern central California. Widely felt in the central and southern parts of the state, it was located in the aftershock area of ​​the Ridgecrest earthquake of magnitude 7.1 July 2019. I have been very interested in this area since the most recent 5.2 near Lake Mono and 6.5 in western Nevada. My post included an image of the three earthquake sites and dates, and their aftershocks sequences.

I received a polite but firm comment that I made a mistake. A woman told me that the Ridgecrest earthquake occurred on July 4, not July 5. This dialogue started. She explained that his strength of 6.4 degrees occurred on July 4 and may have confused the two. Oh no, she gave me a detailed description of what she was exposed to. I have sent her a Wikipedia link with all the information about earthquakes. Her response was: “I don’t need a link”, “I passed it.”

Memory can be tricky, especially with deep experiences like an earthquake, a car accident or any other event that makes your adrenaline rush. Where we were, the colors and smells we wore may seem engraved in the mind. But your brain is selective about the information it collects and memories may be modified by what other people say, what you read, and your rethink.

There are many studies on memory unreliability. It is of particular importance with regard to the legal system and the reliability of eyewitness testimony. See a 2010 American science article for studies of how memory may lead to bias (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-the-eyes-have-it/). Jurors tend to balance eyewitness reports heavily, especially when the witness is completely certain of what they have seen. But what she remembers is not absolute, and according to the article, “Psychologists have found that memories are reconstructed rather than displayed every time we remember them.”

I made another attempt to explain the Ridgecrest earthquake sequence with the commentator on Facebook. I took a screenshot of a list of USGS earthquakes for the largest earthquakes in the sequence explaining that the dates / times were in UTC and to obtain the local California times that I needed to subtract seven hours. 6.4 is listed as 2019-07-04 17:33:49 (UTC) and 7.1 as 2019-07-06 03:19:53 (UTC). Conclusion – 6.4 occurred on July 4 at 10:33 AM PST and 7.1 on July 5 at 8:19 PM

This only opened up a whole new discussion and made me realize that time can be confusing in more ways than one. “Do you mean that my earthquake really happened the next day?” Every morning I record daily seismic activity from USGS data. For earthquakes in the United States, I use local and non-US time, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). It’s not really GMT, USGS and scientists around the world are actually using Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). But for all practical purposes, it is matching GMT or Zulu (military) time and more people are known as GMT.

How did time in Greenwich, England become the world’s benchmark reference? It is a long story and begins several centuries before the birth of Christ. Greek, Egyptian, and other early scholars needed a coordinate system of locations on Earth. The latitude was perfectly evident because the Earth’s rotation made an easy reference system with the equator and poles. Longitude is a more difficult nut to crack.

The concept of longitude, the great circles that pass through the poles and around the Earth like orange parts, dates back at least as much as the Greek scholar Eratosthenes in the third century BC. For centuries, explorers and scientists have been searching for it but never found a clear sign or the main longitude on the planet where the meridians should begin. Ptolemy adopted in the first century AD AD the main meridian that runs roughly through the Canary Islands. It can be said that his geography is the first to apply the concept of the main meridian to the maps of the known world. There was a reason to choose Africa’s external location. The concept of negative numbers has not yet been invented.

When the Age of Exploration exploded in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, longitude became a political as well as an academic issue. Almost every country wanted the world to start on its soil. There were more than 30 major longitudes in use – in Paris, Brussels and Antwerp, and many in Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Scandinavia. Even religious groups are in conflict with the Jesuit Longitude and one of the Vatican-linked.

Our daughter undertook her undergraduate studies at the Conservatory of Music at the site of the Royal Naval College in Greenwich. It was a great place to visit and we made several visits to the Royal Observatory on the hill overlooking the college. On one trip, we met a tour group in the chronometer room where the famous John Harrison watches are presented and a lecture on longitude, longitude and the role of the Royal Observatory has been dealt with. If you can’t reach Greenwich, I highly recommend David Sobel’s book “Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius” which solved the greatest scientific problem of his time.

By the mid-nineteenth century, an abundance of maps and meridians was creating confusion. An international conference was held in Washington DC in 1884 attended by representatives from 21 countries. Since many of these countries had ties to the British Empire, it is not very surprising that Greenwich meridian was the winner when voting took place.

The modern main meridian is very close to that established by the royal astronomer Sir George Erie approximately 170 years ago. When we visited, crowds of tourists lined up to stand one foot on either side of the Erie. At night, the meridian has a more modern presence as the laser beam blows across the sky.

I doubt if I convinced my Facebook visitor. But it made me think of time and why it is not so simple.

Note: Listen to the daily seismic update on 707-826-6020 or click the audio link at https://www2.humboldt.edu/kamome/resources.

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