Free Republic

A moment of historic danger: It is still 90 seconds to midnight Ominous trends continue to point the world toward global catastrophe. The war in Ukraine and the widespread and growing reliance on nuclear weapons increase the risk of nuclear escalation. China, Russia, and the United States are all spending huge sums to expand or modernize their nuclear arsenals, adding to the ever-present danger of nuclear war through mistake or miscalculation. In 2023, Earth experienced its hottest year on record, and massive floods, wildfires, and other climate-related disasters affected millions of people around the world. Meanwhile, rapid and worrisome developments...

Data shows our former 24-hour daily rotation is decreasing incrementally, making the day marginally shorter. For example, Sunday lasted only 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59.9998927 seconds, according to TimeAndDate.com. And though the planet’s rotation rate may speed up or slow down slightly from day to day, due to natural terrestrial and celestial alterations, astronomical calendar trends indicate that recent years have become shorter overall. Case in point, 2020 beat 2005’s shortest day 28 times, and 2021 is slated to be about 19 milliseconds short of a typical year, with an average daily deficit of 0.5 milliseconds. The world’s clock...

While WorldTimeServer.com can help you look up accurate times around the world, our visitors have expressed much interest in our help to keep your local computer clock accurate, too. Atomic Clock Synchronization is the best way to make this happen. Windows can do it ... Windows has a built-in "service" that allows your computer to reference an atomic clock server, such as the atomic clock servers operated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the United States. Your current computer time is compared with the current atomic time and an adjustment is made to keep your local...

"It has an accuracy that's equivalent to about one second in 300 million years." - "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."

The international definition of a second of time could be heading for a change, thanks to researchers who have demonstrated that an advanced type of ‘atomic clock’ has the degree of precision and stability needed to provide a new standard. Jérôme Lodewyck of the Paris Observatory and his colleagues have shown that two so-called optical lattice clocks (OLCs) can remain as perfectly in step as experimental precision can establish1. They say that this test of consistency is essential if OLCs are to be used to redefine the second, which is currently defined according to a different type of atomic clock....

An Ottawa researcher says it's about time the world had a better clock, and he is spending most of his waking hours creating it. He's working with the National Research Council of Canada to build the world's most accurate clock -- a cesium fountain clock, which would be 100 times more accurate. "We have to be very, very careful in building it, because it has to be perfect," he says. He says the clock would better meet the demands of scientists around the world who need such precision for their work. Marmet works for the National Research Council's Institute for...

A matchbox sized atomic clock could be used to build more accurate automated aircraft navigation systems, its US military creators say. Scientists at the Office of Naval Research have developed a functioning atomic clock measuring 40 cubic centimetres in volume - about the size of a matchbox. The Ultra-miniature Rubidium Atomic Clock is so precise that it will lose only one second over 10,000 years. It also uses just one watt of power. Existing atomic clocks are many orders of magnitude larger - typically around 4,800 cubic centimetres - and normally consume around 50 watts. John Kim, who led the...

For about an hour around 4pm EST, both my wall clock that synchs to the atomic clock satellite signal, and my computer clock that pings atomic clock web sites, gave erratic responses.They seem to be ok and in sych now, and I am posting this in case anyone else out there experienced the same thing.

Why your PC is no better than a $15 wristwatch David Coursey,Executive Editor, AnchorDeskWednesday, July 3, 2002 Working behind the scenes, a small government agency headquartered outside of Denver operates a network of 14 servers capable of changing the operating systems on your PC--and millions of others--in less than a second. These servers interact with susceptible computers some 550 million times a day. Yet most people don't know they exist, the special protocols that control them, or even the nature of their mission. Major computer manufacturers and operating system developers are also part of the conspiracy: Both Microsoft and...