NIST scientists Greg Hoth (left) and Vladislav Gerginov work on NIST-F4, NIST's new cesium fountain clock.
R. Eskalis/NIST
Clocks on Earth are ticking a bit more regularly thanks to NIST-F4, a new atomic clock at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) campus in Boulder, Colorado.
This month, NIST researchers published a journal article establishing NIST-F4 as one of the world's most accurate timekeepers. NIST has also submitted the clock for acceptance as a primary frequency standard by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), the body that oversees the world's time.
NIST-F4 measures an unchanging frequency in the heart of cesium atoms, the internationally agreed-upon basis for defining the second since 1967. The clock is based on a "fountain" design that represents the gold standard of accuracy in timekeeping. NIST-F4 ticks at such a steady rate that if it had started running 100 million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed, it would be off by less than a second today.
By joining a small group of similarly elite time pieces run by just 10 countries around the world, NIST-F4 makes the foundation of global time more stable and secure. At the same time, it is helping to steer the clocks NIST uses to keep official U.S. time. Distributed via radio and the internet, official U.S. time is critical for telecommunications and transportation systems, financial trading platforms, data center operations and more.
NIST-F4 has improved time signals that are "used literally billions of times each day for everything from setting clocks and watches to ensuring the accurate time stamping of hundreds of billions of dollars of electronic financial transactions," said Liz Donley, chief of the Time and Frequency Division at NIST.
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