Once you arrive, you’ll have to step through a “series of tunnels and chambers” where they’ve basically bored a hole in the side of the mountain. From there, you’ll enter five room-sized “anniversary” chambers, one each for the one-year, 10-year, 100-year, 1,000-year and 10,000-year anniversaries. Kind of spooky-sounding, but kind of awesome-sounding, too. They’re even building a special orrery (a mechanical model of the solar system) in the one-year anniversary room that the clock will activate one year after it goes live, at “solar noon.”
The one-year orrery. Photo: Long Now
What about the 100-, 1,000- and 10,000-year chambers? Bezos says they’re planning to “leave those to future generations.” He adds that they’re still working on an idea to animate the 10-year chamber.
And it sounds like they’re approaching the finish line for building the clock itself. Bezos says the clock’s final design and engineering is just about complete, and that “fabrication of the full-size Clock parts has begun.”
So what’s the clock’s end date? 12,011? Give or take. We’re still some years away from its activation date, looks like, but then what’s a few years when you’re predicting in thousands?