It’s about time: New atomic clock is more accurate

[Fansome]

It’s about time: New atomic clock is more accurate

Published Thursday, April 3, 2014 | 5:10 p.m.

Updated 6 hours, 10 minutes ago

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — Good news for people who are sticklers for punctuality: The National Institute of Standards and Technology has a new atomic clock that isn't supposed to gain or lose a second for roughly 300 million years.

The new clock was launched Thursday. It's located at the institute's Boulder center.

The Boulder Daily Camera reports (http://tinyurl.com/mtr9vfn ) the clock is the nation's civilian time standard. The U.S. Naval Observatory maintains military time.

The new clock is about three times more accurate than the old one. The institute says it will keep operating both and use comparisons to improve them.

Banks, computer networks and others use the atomic clock to synchronize their own. The institute's radio broadcasts update about 50 million timekeepers daily. Its Internet service gets about 8 billion automated synchronization requests daily.

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Information from: Daily Camera, http://www.dailycamera.com/

[Nella F.]

Hold on: "Its Internet service gets about 8 Billion automated synchronization requests 'Daily'?
Eight Billion? Daily?
Wow! Three times more accurate. How accurate was the last Atomic clock? Maybe it lost/gained a millionth of a picosecond in a thousand centuries? Hu?  (I'll bet there's a mathematic formula just for this).

[skeezix]

Good. Was tired of F1 and its sloppy time keeping.

Now NIST can focus on getting their transmitters in order.

[Pigmeat]

How's the atomic tire pressure gauge coming along, Al?