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New US Atomic Clock Goes Live
PaisteUser (810863) writes with news about a new, hyper-accurate atomic clock unveiled by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. "A new atomic clock, so accurate it will lose or gain only one second every 300 million years, was unveiled Thursday by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The NIST-F2 had been in development for about a decade and is three times more accurate than the F1, which has been in use since 1999. The institute will continue operating both clocks for now at its campus in Boulder, Colorado."
I wonder what backdoor the NSA has built into this.
How do I point ntpdate to it?
Well, it's important to me to be accurate within one second every three hundred million years!
Not sure how I'd manage if my time was only accurate to one second in ONE hundred million years....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
NIST has vastly more accurate clocks - so I don't see what the big deal is.
http://www.nist.gov/pml/div688...
... but they will still have to manually adjust for DST twice a year.
Trolling is a art,
No, the weight of a kilogram is completely arbitrary. They are trying to fix it to something but right now it is just a weight.
A atomic clock works by counting the vibrations in an atom. The atomic clock fails when it miscounts the vibration of an atom, causing the error. The new clock is so good at counting that errors rarely occur.
Every day at noon they compare it to the sundial out back.
Trolling is a art,
Is the new clock metric, or the old English units of measure?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Even if it is arbitrary, we can use it for synchronization as long as every relies on it as the standard.
FTA:
"If we've learned anything in the last 60 years of building atomic clocks, we've learned that every time we build a better clock, somebody comes up with a use for it that you couldn't have foreseen," says physicist Steven Jefferts, lead designer of NIST-F2.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
If it is the reference then making claims about its accuracy is surly redundant?
Several of the sciences depend on extremely accurate timing. It's not a question of seconds lost over millions of years, but rather "how accurately can I time an event that is only a few nanoseconds long", or even better, "Exactly how far apart were these two events, even if the events are separated by hours, or days". It's misleading for the media to talk about timing in the way that they do, but apparently normal people's brains explode when someone says "nanosecond" or "parts per billion".
I met a guy that used to work at NIST that mentioned that their clocks are so sensitive, they can tell what floor the atomic clocks are on because of of the slightly different gravitational potential each clock experiences. I wonder what kind of resolution the can resolve. Can a very massive bolder throw off the clock a little? ..perhaps one day we will have to keep better track of the local gravitational potential well. It's possible to measure the gravitational constant with simple apparatus at home. Using two massive bodies in a torsion pendulum arrangement, you can estimate "big G" --
http://www.owlnet.rice.edu/~do...
Here is an wikipedia article that mentions the phenomena with atomic clocks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
The higher-accuracy clocks are not based on Cesium, which is a necessary basis for Standards Compliance. As I understand it, the F3 clock (from the article) is a "Cesium-fountain" atomic clock and is therefore suitable for use in standards-based calculations. The clock(s) referenced in that article, on the other hand, are Mercury and Aluminum based and therefore cannot be referenced according to SI standards.. The SI governing body would have to change their standard for the other clocks to be considered, but given how many things are based on the Standard, modifying it is a non-trivial exercise...
-AC
A man with two atomic clocks is never sure.
The internationally agreed time standard (TAI or UTC, which are the same, only different) is based on an ensemble of clocks throughout the world. The contribution from NIST (and USNO) is only a part of the realization.
Because of this, actual time can only be known after the fact, because post-processing is needed.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Would someone tell me how this happened? We were the fucking vanguard of timekeeping industry in this country. The Naval Institute was the time to keep. Then the other guy came out with accuracy of 1 part per few billion. Were we scared? Hell, no. Because we hit back with a little thing called the Atomic fucking clock. That's A for both atomic and an aloe strip. For moisture. But you know what happened next? Shut up, I'm telling you what happened—the bastards went to went all nuclear on us. They've introduced accuracy of 1 second in 300 million years. Now we're standing around with our cocks in our hands, selling 1 part per few billion and a fucking strip. Accuracy or no, suddenly we're the chumps. Well, fuck it. We're going to 500 million.
Sure, we could go to 400 million next, like the competition. That seems like the logical thing to do. After all, three worked out pretty well, and four is the next number after three. So let's play it safe. Why innovate when we can follow? Oh, I know why: Because we're a business, that's why!
You think it's crazy? It is crazy. But I don't give a shit. From now on, we're the ones who have the edge in the time-keeping game. Are they the best a man can get? Fuck, no. Navy is the best a man can get.
What part of this don't you understand? If accuracy of one second in 100 million years is good, and one in three million is better, obviously one in five million would make us the best fucking time keeping machine that ever existed. Comprende? We didn't claw our way to the top of the clock making game by clinging to the pendulum industry standard. We got here by taking chances. Well, one in 500 million is the biggest chance of all.
Here's the report from Engineering. Someone put it in the bathroom: I want to wipe my ass with it. They don't tell me what to invent—I tell them. And I'm telling them to stick two hundred million years in there. I don't care how. Make the atoms so small they're invisible. Put some on the handle. I don't care if they have to cram the last 100 million years in perpendicular to the other four, just do it!
You're taking the "safety" part of "nuclear safety" too literally, grandma. Cut the strings and soar. Let's hit it. Let's roll. This is our chance to make time keeping history. Let's dream big. All you have to do is say that one second in five hundred million years can happen, and it will happen. If you aren't on board, then fuck you. And if you're on the board, then fuck you and your father. Hey, if I'm the only one who'll take risks, I'm sure as hell happy to hog all the glory when the one second in 500 million years becomes the standard in the U.S. of "this is how tell time from now on" A.
People said we couldn't go to three. It'll cost a fortune to manufacture, they said. Well, we did it. Now some egghead in a lab is screaming "Five's crazy?" Well, perhaps he'd be more comfortable in the labs at Casio, working on fucking electrics. Wrist watches, my white ass!
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we should just ride in CERN's wake and make particle accelerators. Ha! Not on your fucking life! The day I shadow a penny-ante outfit like CERN is the day I leave the atomic clock game for good, and that won't happen until the day I die!
The market? Listen, we make the market. All we have to do is put her out there with a little jingle. It's as easy as, "Hey, telling time with anything less than 0.000000% accuracy is like trying to tell time from vcr display after a power outage" Or "Sure you'll still be late, but now you know exactly how late"
I know what you're thinking now: What'll people say? Mew mew mew. Oh, no, what will people say?! Grow the fuck up. When you're on top, people talk. That's the price you pay for being on top. Which we are, always have been, and forever shall be, Amen. 1 second / 500 million years - sweet Jesus in heaven.
Stop. I just had a stroke of genius. Are you ready? Open your mouth, baby birds, cause Mama's about to drop you one sweet, fat nightcrawler. Here she comes: Put another ntp s
And what, exactly, is the point if they have to reset it every year or two anyway due to leap seconds?
Kilograms are a MASS
No, they are pretty neat actually.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The point is not to get the actual date/time accurately, the point is to get the very accurate amount of time that elapsed between two events.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Atomic clocks in the 70s could show dilation effects from travel on airplanes or in satellites. GPS satellites regularly have to deal with this. The most precise clocks these days (more precise than the ones in the story here) can measure time dilation effects from just stacking the clocks on top of each other due to change in altitude of less than a meter. But for the most part these effects don't matter in the big picture, as you can define time relative to a frame not moving with respect to Earth at a specific elevation.
it will lose or gain only one second every 300 million years
Can't they just leave a note to the future people to click it forward/back at the right time?
If the clock in question supports 9-digit years, they could even set an alarm...
Not sure if the parent is simply being funny, but ... ...
No atomic clock is ever 'reset' because of leap seconds. All they produce is a one-pulse-per-second 'tick'. The labels on those ticks are completely arbitrary. When a leap second occurs, you just change the labels