Scientists have set up the world’s most precise ‘metronome’ for a kilometer-wide network. The timing system synchronizes a 4.7-kilometer-long laser-microwave network with 950 attoseconds precision. An attosecond is a millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a second. (1)

Impressive. Or so it seems.

Because the problem is not synchronization per se.

Everything is already synchronized. In their own frequencies, according to their own preferences. The problem is that we want to synchronize things as we wish fit. We want to exert control. We do not care about how nature is already synchronized. All we care is to make our machine work.

But How would we progress? someone might ask…

Sure. Making a laser and achieving state of the art synchronization is ‘progress’. But after doing that just wonder: What if that synchronization is at the expense of another more valuable synchronization? What if you disrupted something much more fundamental in order to make this laser network work? Yes, it now works. However I have the sense that we are not more happy or more complete as humans because of this ‘achievement’.

Somehow I have the feeling that a river somewhere stopped flowing…

Even for an attosecond.