What is the Significance of a Secular Timescale?

[Simfish]

"act on any time scale from short term, commensurable with the orbit periods to secular (measured in 104 to 106 years)."

is a sentence with it.

I can't google up a good definition of "secular" in this context

 

[mgb_phys]

Secular means non-periodic
Of course you have to look at an infinite length of data before you decide that it isn;t periodic on some longer timescale!

It's form the original latin secular=age, nothing to do with secular=not religous

 

[chemisttree]

I thought it meant "once in an age" or "extremely long period" rather than non-periodic. In this case I think it means "long term" considering it's usage in justaposition to 'short term' in the example sentence.

See http://www.springerlink.com/content/x7884617p417485h/".

Google "secular orbit" or "secular interaction".

 

[mgb_phys]

In maths/finance secualr variation means a long term overall trend.
In astronomy I thought it meant a variation that is doesn't repeat or isn't predictable - like a chaotic orbit.