The Measuring Rod

A few (dis?)-junctive thoughts on standards

Dear Reader, I have a scenario for you. Let me propose I hire you to measure the length of a building, but the tool I give you is only a 10’ pole to do so. This rod, you may imagine at first, seems quite good to measure a building with. Indeed, you simply lay it on the floor, mark a unit, move it down unit by unit until the breadth of the structure is covered, and get the number of rods the building is. Such a task ought render you something of a rather accurate estimation of its dimensions. But now, suppose an unexpected thing is required of you! You must measure the distance between window panels with the same 10’ pole. Rather hard, considering the panels are something between 1’-2’, and often times fractions of an inch off from a round number. What use is your 10’ pole? You can only fumble it to the window’s edge, and wobble it around to guess. Perhaps its own weight bends it as it leads off the other side onto the wall, with no where to lean on. Perhaps the torque gravity induces upon this humble pole pries it from your fingers and you watch as it flings itself onto the ground once more. I imagine you may attempt some innovations, such as placing your elbow at the end of the pole, and trying to see how many elbow-to-fist units the pole divvies up to. Ah! Now you can use your elbow to measure the panels and try to keep the units aligned to the pole standard you’re forced to work with. Oh but alas, the panels do not perfectly fit your new sub-unit. And now you’re forced to guess a fraction off the fractional sub-unit you’ve made. What a poor guess indeed!

Congratulations, Anon. You’ve discovered the Measuring Rod Problem. I think there’s a more scientific name for it, but I couldn’t care less. That’s my name for it. As a definition, it can be rendered as: when your tool or unit of measurement is too big for the thing you are measuring, there is an inherent uncertainty that is introduced when trying to measure. Generally, this only applies when you try to measure a small thing with a unit bigger than the thing. Being half a pole off for something 100.25 poles tall, is an error of .25%. Being half a pole off for something that is a quarter of a pole wide is an error of 200%. You see thusly, it is very much so a one-way scalar issue.

This problem is, as far as I can surmise, what the entire field of Quantum blah-blah is derived from. The smallest tool we have for measuring is the Photon. Quantum phenomena are smaller than the photon. Thus it is, results are “pixelated”, so to speak. They lack refinement. I do not know why some scientists chose to invent microscopic black magic to explain a rather simple phenomena, but that is beyond my place. The simple reason for quantum uncertainties is because the photon is currently the smallest thing we can use to measure another thing, and when it comes to measuring quantum phenomena that is the equivalent of measuring a wall’s strength by crashing a truck into it. Oh sure, you will have some general idea of how strong both the wall and truck are, but you won’t have either left after the measurement is conducted. Incidentally, this is also why particle accelerators are a very stupid way to conduct refined studies of such infinitesimally small things.

The Measuring Rod problem has more issues, however. You’ve probably heard a bajillion times that the speed of light is a constant value, equal to something approaching 299,792,458 m/s. Of course, this is based off measuring from a stationary position - of which, the Earth is not. The Earth is moving 30 kilometers a second, measured from a stationary position of the Sun - of which, the Sun is not. The Sun is moving 230 km/s, measured from a stationary position at the center of the galaxy - of which, the Galaxy is not. The Galaxy is moving 2.1 million km/hr, measured from…

…oh dear.

There exists here a little-known (sources lacking) problem in physics which is oft swept under the rug: What exactly is a universal observer? By that I mean, what’s something not moving at all from which you can measure all other things from its zero value? The answer, at least for now, is that there isn’t any. We just kinda have to pick a spot and roll with it if it seems to be the center. And so, in reality, the speed of light being c means that it is whatever the real speed of light is, minus the speed of the Earth relative to what we can see moving. For all we know, the entire universe may be moving at some unknown speed from an unknown point of reference, and the true speed of light is many multitudes higher. I’m sure there’s some fancy way to disprove it, but it would require an absolute stationary observer - of which, we do not have one.

It is rather amusing to note that the speed of light has actually varied throughout history. While these variations are usually hand-waved as a result of less-accurate measuring techniques, this makes no sense. As the trend line of more accuracy continued to close in on the speed of light. there was a sudden drop globally - they all detected the same sudden reduction in the speed of light. Likewise, after World War Two, all tests detected a sudden increase in the seed of light. This period of sudden change in c between the years of 1925 through 1945 could be anything. Rather than a change in whatever c is, it very well could be that our entire region of space-time shifted for some reason, trimming down our perceived speed of c locally while not changing the constant. But I think, due to the length of time this occurred, it was likely a real change in c.

Indeed, that these variations exist all the way into the Atomic era leaves the claim that they were merely statistical errors very suspect. Why is the same error in all tools globally regardless of tool used or technical skill of the tester? I’m sorry, dear reader, but when you are blowing up atoms it is not a technical error to get a variation in the speed of c. Your tools are precise enough to blow up an atom, and while a photon is significantly smaller than an atom, both the speed of the atom and the photon are the same. No, dear reader, I suspect what was actually being observed were indeed fine small wobbles in the speed of c, either as a product of our zooping through the cosmos, or as an actual alteration in that fundamental constant. Regardless, in order to not deal with these wobbles, c now has a fixed value, and we are not allowed to question it any longer… What’s worse, it appears the bases of that constant are constructed in such a way that you wouldn’t even notice a change anyway.

There’s a way to perhaps visualize this a bit better. Let’s say you didn’t know you were on a train going 300 miles per hour, and the only window is on the floor looking at the track. Let’s say you want to take a photo of the track, to get a shot of its structure. But, again, you don’t know you are moving. You are on the best train ever that moves so smoothly and quietly, that it feels like you’re not moving at all. You take a photo, and you get a blur due to the speed. How do you know it’s a blur? Such is the problem whenever scientists try to take a study of the fine structure of the cosmos. It may feel as though you are in a stationary lab taking a photo of particles colliding, but in reality you are going many millions of kilometers an hour with the galaxy. Returning to the train scenario, you may even think the blurry homogeneous photo of the track represents an ideal…

Let’s go further. How do you know for certain that a stable orbit is a circle? Scientists say a circle is equidistant from the center, so its centripetal force is equal throughout. Therefore, it must be the ideal because it is equal. And yet, if I pick the galactic core as the observation point, those stable orbits take on a wavelength and appear as linear frequencies instead of circular orbits. They are still preserving their centripetal forces, of course. They are still mathematically stable. But they no longer appear circular.

Our measuring rod for a solar system is the ideal circular orbit, so anything that isn’t that, isn’t a planet in our solar system. We think wherever all bodies take on circles must be the center. Because circles look simple and equal, and that’s our idea of truth. Why? Well…it’s a circle, and it’s equal. So it must be such! Gravity, of course, seems to mostly align with this presumed ideal - so long you are looking from the right perspective and scale, of course. But how do you know that isn’t just a product of illusion? No different than the forced perspective of some art? Only, instead of a 2d plane it’s on a 3d space in this instance. Practically speaking, there would be few ways to tell… But it would be hard.

You may here scoff and say c’mon, if you traced the orbits of the planets by distance and speed from Earth it would be a total messy chaos as the solar circular orbits got distorted from a forced geocentric model… And yet, if you actually do trace the orbits of the spheres from the center of the Earth, you don’t get a chaotic mess. You get sacred geometric patterns. How curious…

Indeed, dear reader, I must confess to you something. I am a Geocentrist. When I say this at parties it raises many eyebrows. If there is protest, I simply point out I do not believe an ideal orbit is circular. Though, I will tell you, you won’t get a girlfriend acting this way.

Of course, I am not being totally honest here. The Geocentrists of yonder day believed the planets to travel in perfect circles around the Earth. Such a thing is silly. You can easily disprove this by looking at the planets throughout the year and noting their change in brightness as they sway closer and further from the earth, and the many times planets enter retrograde motion (Those smaller loops you see on the diagrams above). But, it is rather funny that the arguments between Heliocentric & Geocentric models is nothing more than a battle between autists if they like circles or not.

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The Measuring Rod Problem is rather ancient. When an angel gave Ezekiel a fixed rod to measure the Temple of the Lord, it appeared to be in whole and half units from the reference of the heavenly rod given unto him. This implied order, planning, and a general technical capacity. Likewise for John, centuries later in Revelation. Of course, it’s never referenced exactly how long a “cubit” is by which it is measured by, but no doubt these units would be wildly different if measured by a metric stick. Thus it is implied, that whatever standard of heaven that Ezekiel and John’s measuring rods were based upon, the Temple conforms to this unit - ergo, it is indeed a Temple of Heavenly standards.

In likewise manner, when you measure American buildings with American measuring rods, they are usually in whole or fixed fractional limits, but wildly off on the metric scale. When you measure European buildings with American units, they are not whole or easily divisible numbers either. The measuring rod sets the order for the structure, but a measuring rod also becomes something of a genetic marker for the structure. We know a structure’s builders by the measuring rod that ordered them.

Thus, be it a building, a word, and institution, or anything at all, a simple axiom is revealed:

If you know the measuring rod of your enemy, you reveal what your enemy has built.