It's good practice to pay attention to your watch. Knowing the exact time of the day allows you to show up in crucial meetings and appointments on time. People who are always late tend to miss opportunities and earn the ire of their colleagues as well.
Keeping watch of the time, however, requires ensuring that the time that's displayed on your watch is the same as the one you see on your cell phone as it generally shows the time that most people follow and with the unveiling of the NIST-F2 atomic clock, you now have a more accurate standard for your time-keeping.
Developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the U.S. federal agency responsible for making measurements and settings standards, the NIST-F2 atomic clock is now considered as the most precise clock in the world following its unveiling on Thursday. The clock is so accurate it can run for the next 300 million years and still continue showing the correct time without gaining or losing even a mere second.
The F2's ability to retain perfect time for the next 300 million years may appear to be an exaggerated and unimportant feature for some but the NIST said that advancing atomic timekeeping has implications in a modern society.
The agency cited technologies that people need and use everyday such as cellular phones, electric power grid and Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite receivers that depend on highly accurate atomic clocks. The agency also pointed out that improved timekeeping has historically been tied to innovations and improvements in technology.
"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," NST-F2 lead designer and NIST physicist Steven Jefferts said.
The F2 is thrice more accurate than its predecessor, the NIST-F1 which has been in use by the U.S. as official source of time since 1999. The new clock will provide the new standard for time and frequency in the country but F1 will continue to run alongside it for comparison's sake. NIST scientists will also be able to improve the two cesium-based atomic clocks by using them simultaneously together.
