Can you use the time turner in different increments, and possibly with a different maximum, if you fully understand hours are arbitrary? This sounds exactly like partial transfiguration.
(Alternatively, you go back some fixed amount of time for every grain of time sand in the turner, and you could build one of other increments by using a different quantity of sand.)
How does Time Turner select reference frame? What if you use it in the orbit, will you see Earth rotational angle jump by 90°? Assuming the reference frame is fixed to Earth surface, going sufficiently far away will give you FTL which can be used to create arbitrarily long time loops. Assuming it is not, what happens if you are moving at relativistic speeds (relative to Earth) and use the Time Turner?
EDIT: We not even need to consider relativity—what if you are flying on a broomstick (constant speed) or on a moving train and use Time Turner? This experiment is simple enough and can reveal a lot.
Using the time it takes Earth to rotate one degree gives you 86400 seconds in a day /360 degrees = 240 seconds. But the length of the day has been getting larger as the Earth slows at a rate of about 1.7 ms/century wiki
To find when one degree was equal to 234 seconds, we can find when a day was approximately 234*360 degrees = 84240 seconds, or approximately 127 million years ago. Putting the creation of the stone right in the middle of the Cretaceous Period.
Coincidentally, this also solves the issue of how the T Rex got away with such tiny arms. They had wands!
Well, in seconds it’s 234, which looks slightly less arbitrary.
Waait. Did whoever made it even use our time units?
Fair point; I didn’t think of that. Does anyone know of a unit of time in which the equivalent of 3:54 would be a Schelling point of some sort?
Time Turners use units of one hour, so at least some kinds of magical items use our units.
Can you use the time turner in different increments, and possibly with a different maximum, if you fully understand hours are arbitrary? This sounds exactly like partial transfiguration.
(Alternatively, you go back some fixed amount of time for every grain of time sand in the turner, and you could build one of other increments by using a different quantity of sand.)
How does Time Turner select reference frame? What if you use it in the orbit, will you see Earth rotational angle jump by 90°? Assuming the reference frame is fixed to Earth surface, going sufficiently far away will give you FTL which can be used to create arbitrarily long time loops. Assuming it is not, what happens if you are moving at relativistic speeds (relative to Earth) and use the Time Turner?
EDIT: We not even need to consider relativity—what if you are flying on a broomstick (constant speed) or on a moving train and use Time Turner? This experiment is simple enough and can reveal a lot.
DO NOT MESS WITH TIME. Obviously if you attempt to use it in the stated way something very bad will happen.
3′54″ is almost 71 halakim.
Edited to add: which, according to Babylonian time (see the same article), is almost the amount of time it takes the Earth to rotate one degree.
Using the time it takes Earth to rotate one degree gives you 86400 seconds in a day /360 degrees = 240 seconds. But the length of the day has been getting larger as the Earth slows at a rate of about 1.7 ms/century wiki
To find when one degree was equal to 234 seconds, we can find when a day was approximately 234*360 degrees = 84240 seconds, or approximately 127 million years ago. Putting the creation of the stone right in the middle of the Cretaceous Period.
Coincidentally, this also solves the issue of how the T Rex got away with such tiny arms. They had wands!
Well, seconds have been used since the Babylonian time period. However, we also don’t know how carefully Harry measured the recharge time.
Wikipedia disagrees: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second#Before_mechanical_clocks
There are a lot of older units of time listed there, but none of them seem to fit.
Huh. That’s fascinating. I had apparently wrongly assumed that because it had the same division into 60 that it also was as old. Apparently not.
Carefully enough not to round it up to 3:55. Presumably, it’s within a second.