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Nuclear Crisis Stopped Time In Japan

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the now-ramen-twists-the-other-way dept.

angry tapir writes "The problems at Japan's Fukushima-1 nuclear plant have had an unexpected impact on the country's ability to keep time: a transmitter that sends the national time signal to many thousands of clocks and watches has been forced offline making the timepieces a little less reliable than usual."

19 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. Worst headline ever. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not only did time not stop, but the clocks didn't even stop. They just aren't being synchronized anymore. Oh no!

    1. Re:Worst headline ever. by captainpanic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Not only did time not stop, but the clocks didn't even stop. They just aren't being synchronized anymore. Oh no!

      In Japan, a country that considers a train late if it arrives more than 20 seconds later than scheduled, that's pretty bad.

    2. Re:Worst headline ever. by Ender_Wiggin · · Score: 3, Interesting

      You mean if I don't synchronize my clock with the atomic clock more than every few days, it will be more than 20 seconds off?

      Most wristwatches I've owned have a disclaimer in the manual that they keep time with a margin of error ±15 seconds per month. Those are the cheap Casios. I'm sure TV stations etc. have a better clock than me.

    3. Re:Worst headline ever. by AmiMoJo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Indeed, due to reception issues it would be highly unwise to rely on a radio time broadcast for accuracy in important situations. You can have a mix of time sources (GPS, NTP, RDS etc.) but basically you need a reasonably accurate clock for when they are unavailable. Fortunately modules with better than 10 seconds/month are extremely cheap.

      I got back from Japan on Sunday, there did not seem to be any time related problems. I didn't even know about it until this story.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    4. Re:Worst headline ever. by captainpanic · · Score: 5, Informative

      I have a hunch that their perspective has changed somewhat in the past month or so.

      Perspective on what? Time?

      I really doubt it. If anything, the near-perfect organisation of Japan has saved countless lives.

    5. Re:Worst headline ever. by rubycodez · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I really doubt it. If anything, the near-perfect organisation of Japan has saved countless lives.

      With tens of thousands of suicides a year, I think not. Another example of a modern society self-driven to neurosis.
      The WHO even disputes Japan's definition of suicide that makes the reported numbers an estimated three times lower.

    6. Re:Worst headline ever. by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      THANK YOU. Last time I pointed out Japan's high suicide rate I was modded down. It's real, and it's a real consequence of a high-pressure lifestyle. Japan is to life what Survivor is to television. The weakest links get voted off the island... forcibly. Emotional and mental abuse are real kinds of abuse.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  2. Caesium clock versus wild Caesium by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Very sorry for being 28 picoseconds late! The radioactive Caesium in the air put out my atomic clock

    1. Re:Caesium clock versus wild Caesium by shentino · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Actually this is good if it disrupts the microsecond arbitrage in Wall Street.

  3. a French poem about stopping the time, by georgesdev · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Ô temps ! suspends ton vol...
    -- French poem by Lamartine http://astronad.voila.net/Lamartine.htm

  4. And? by mirix · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Good thing there is still GPS, NTP, etc.

    Worst case a few clocks have to fall back to quartz and lose a couple seconds a day, no?

    --
    Sent from my PDP-11
    1. Re:And? by mcvos · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Good thing there is still GPS, NTP, etc.

      That's what I've been wondering. With constant GPS signal all over the place, what do we need land-based atomic clock synchronisation for?

    2. Re:And? by LighterShadeOfBlack · · Score: 4, Insightful

      That's what I've been wondering. With constant GPS signal all over the place, what do we need land-based atomic clock synchronisation for?

      You put all of your eggs in one basket, and sooner or later that basket is going to be wiped out by a tsunami/quake.

      If a tsunami or quake takes out GPS satellites in orbit 20km above the surface of the Earth I think accurate time-keeping will be the least of anyone's worries.

      --
      Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
  5. This site has really jumped the shark by slyborg · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I know it's late, and I think this may have been intended as humorous, but really, guys? Has it come to this?

    1. Re:This site has really jumped the shark by discord5 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I know it's late

      The Japanese currently sure don't... HAR HAR HARHAR

      Has it come to this?

      Sadly yes. The site does tend to more fluff, slashvertising, idle shit and biased politics articles than anything really interesting. I'm betting that by 2012 we'll have videos of cats on here.

      Perhaps the new dysfunctional slashdot design should've clued most of us in that we should be leaving for something new.

    2. Re:This site has really jumped the shark by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Funny

      Even the shark has jumped the shark.

      It's sharks all the way up.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    3. Re:This site has really jumped the shark by digitig · · Score: 4, Funny

      I'm betting that by 2012 we'll have videos of cats on here.

      Or photos of CAT 5s, at least.

      --
      Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
  6. Media idiocy by VendettaMF · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This is about as accurate, realistic, rational and un-hyped a headline as here has yet been regarding the entire nuclear incident...

    --
    kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
  7. Unanswered questions by Pesticidal · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So I RTFA and am left wondering why the engineers needed to power down the transmitter just because they were forced to abandon it. I would have presumed it would be controlled by computers and not rely on humans regularly hitting a button LOST-style. Also, I presume the differences in transmission frequency between the two halves of Japan is related to the separate power mains frequencies?