On the line – July 2009

Natasha: Hello, I'm Natasha Waterson.

David: And I'm David Rooney, the Curator of Timekeeping at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.

Natasha: Now today, we're going to be talking all about the Moon.

David: Yes, it's July 1969, a very special anniversary. So 40 years ago, the first human beings set foot on the moon. An extraordinary achievement, part of the Apollo moon missions of the 1960s to visit our nearest neighbour in space.

We've always been fascinated by the Moon, it wasn't just a 1960s thing. And 40 years later, we're still looking up, we're still connected to the light and the gravity that the Moon provides for us.

Now, Natasha, this is my last Time tale before I move on to pastures new in a different London museum, so I wanted to go out by telling you a Time tale that's about as optimistic and about as humbling as you can get.

So, I mentioned in a previous episode some of the long time projects being built around the world as we speak, that are trying to foster conversations about long-term thinking. I mentioned the Long Now Project, which is building a mechanical clock that's so slow, so well-designed that it can run for 10,000 years if it's properly looked after and cared about. That's being built in San Francisco and the prototype's on display in the London Science Museum.

I also mentioned Longplayer, the long-term musical composition by Jem Finer that plays for 1000 years before it even repeats itself, an absolutely remarkable counterpoint to the three minute pop single. And we're actually sitting here in Greenwich just over the river from Trinity Buoy Wharf, the home of Longplayer on the Thames.

I also mentioned a third project, and it's also based on the tidal Thames. It's the Aluna Project by Laura Williams, and as the name suggests this is where the Moon comes into our story.

Natasha: So, can you tell us a bit more about the Aluna Project?

David: Yes, it's really well-advanced, and they're fundraising for it as we speak. But, this is a project to build the world's first tidal-powered moon clock.

Natasha: So, does that mean it's powered by the Moon itself?

David: Exactly so. The moon's gravity gives us our tides, so the tidal energy that gets captured by tidal generators to power the clock does indeed come from the Moon. This is a timekeeper on a monumental scale, and instead of the solar time that we're used to, Greenwich Mean Time being the most well-known solar time, Aluna is going to be a clock telling lunar time. Now, there's three main lunar cycles. There's the moon's phase, that's one cycle every lunar month. Then there's the lunar day, the rising and setting of the Moon. And finally, there's the tide cycle, the ebb and flow of the tides around the Earth which happens twice every lunar day.

Three Moon times, so the clock has three hands, just like the hours, minutes, and seconds of say a grandfather clock, but much slower, and tied to a very different beat.

Natasha: What's the clock going to look like?

David: Well, you can check out the alunatime.org website, and you'll see that it's a monumental-scaled set of three cantilevered steel rings, dug into the ground, clad with translucent locally-sourced recycled glass. And then there's low-energy lights embedded all the way round the rings, and those lights light up according to the Moon's position on each of those three Moon cycles. So, by looking at where the rings are lit up, you can work out the time, the lunar time, And then tie yourself back into one of the most important, but possibly one of the most ignored, timescales that nevertheless really affects our daily lives. So, this is a really exciting project.

The Royal Observatory here in Greenwich was founded in 1675 precisely to map the Moon's position in the sky to make maritime navigation safer. This was called the lunar distance method of finding longitude. And throughout that remarkable history, the astronomers have been looking up at the Moon. And we've all been looking up at the Moon, and then in 1969 we finally set foot on the Moon.

And then, here's Laura Williams bringing all of that lunar heritage together into the Aluna clock, and projecting forward a message of long time, of conversations about long-term thinking about how everyone on Earth is looking at the same Moon, at the same time. And it's the same Moon that we've always looked at, since humans first looked up. What's not to love about this idea Natasha?

Natasha: Indeed. But where did the name come from?

David: Well, Laura tells me that it came from a creation myth of the Kogi people in Colombia, which goes like this: the entity out of which all things are born, in which everything is contained, in Aluna there is the memory of the past and the potential for the future. Aluna forms the bridge between the universe and the human spirit. And that's it Natasha, the memory of the past and the potential for the future. I can't think of a better message than that to finish this series of 12 Time tales. So, I'll stop there, but before I do, I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who's listened to these Time tales.

And thanks to you and to everyone at the Royal Observatory and the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich for letting me tell these stories about time and what it means to us. It's been a real blast, but it's time that I shut up, so I will.

Natasha: David, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure, and good luck for the future.

David: Thanks Natasha.