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New Atomic Clock Reaches the Boundaries of Timekeeping
SonicSpike sends an article from NPR about a high-tech clock being built at the University of Colorado Boulder. It's more precise than any clock before, able to keep perfect time for five billion years. "At the heart of this new clock is the element strontium. Inside a small chamber, the strontium atoms are suspended in a lattice of crisscrossing laser beams. Researchers then give them a little ping, like ringing a bell. The strontium vibrates at an incredibly fast frequency. It's a natural atomic metronome ticking out teeny, teeny fractions of a second." But this precision leads to a problem: the relativistic differences between keeping the clock on the floor versus hanging it on the wall now introduce more significant fluctuations than the clock itself. "Tiny shifts in the earth's crust can throw it off, even when it's sitting still. Even if two of them are synchronized, their different rates of ticking mean they will soon be out of synch. They will never agree. The world's current time is coordinated between atomic clocks all over the planet. But that can't happen with the new one."
A man with an atomic watch won't shut up about it.
A man with an atomic watch better not keep it in his pocket.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
That sounds like a 0th world problem...
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
Yes, but you probably need to change the battery every few million years or so. That's where they will make their money . . . kinda sorta like printer cartridges or iPhone batteries.
You get the atomic clock cheap, but those extras cost you!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
That feeds into best practice for configuring NTP clients - configure one upstream source, or at least three. Never two.
A man with an atomic watch is better than two in the bush.
Tom Geller
"Whoever said a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush hasn't been putting his bird in the right bushes." -- Gallagher
I have a broken watch, can't quite work out when 88:88 is going to roll past though.
yeah and GPS absolutely doesn't rely on clocks...
GPS doesn't have much to do with a saying from the 1800's.
If you thought you were raising a valid point, YOU FAIL IT.
If you thought you were being funny, YOU FAIL IT.
HTH, HAND
You would think so until you hear the full saying:
When going to sea, take one clock or three, but never two
Or a GPS receiver will do