Atomic Clock

It’s An Atomic Clock That’s Keeping NASA Informed About The Exact Time In Space

The main distinguishing feature of an atomic clock is its use of atomic resonance frequency standard to make up its counter. There is however, a notable difference between such clocks and conventional clocks in terms of time base being used since the former uses transition of atoms in various states of energy to keep track of time while a conventional clock uses a pendulum that oscillates.

Is Isidor Rabi The Father Of The Atomic Clock?

It would not be wrong to consider Isidor Rabi as being the father of the atomic clock and it was in fact, this Columbia University alumnus who suggested in the year 1945 that a clock could be made to work on different principles as compared to conventional clocks. It took a further four years before the first atomic clock in the world could be introduced and this was done by the National Bureau of Standards.

There is however no difference between a conventional clock and an atomic clock in their use of oscillations in order to keep track of time, though in the latter case, the oscillation frequency for each atom depends on the atom’s nucleus mass as well as gravity and an electrostatic spring.

Today, an atomic clock uses the cesium atom and it can give extremely accurate time and in fact, most modern such clocks are using the Cesium 133 as their base element. The main use of an atomic clock is that it keeps more accurate time as compared to the conventional means of measuring time based on the Earth’s rotation.

Modern atomic clocks are very accurate and are now used in the form of time standards and the official keeper of atomic time is The International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM). Atomic clock times are very important for GPS and for rocketry as well as for other applications such as Internet and digital television.

One of the striking features of an atomic clock is that it can compensate for randomized fluctuations caused by the earth’s movement and in fact, as recently as December 31st 2005 a leap second was added to compensate for slowing down in the Earth’s movement.

An Atomic Clock Is Always Accurate

Thanks to the unique ability of an atomic clock to keep exceedingly accurate time it has found favor with NASA which needs to get consistent and reliable time while it is engaged in interplanetary explorations in which even a tiny fraction of a second can affect a spacecraft’s navigation considerably.

One frequent complain of everyday people is that when they set an alarm on their conventional clocks, they are never able to wake up according to the set time. This is where an atomic alarm clock can ensure that they always wake up at the exact time that they set their alarms because these clocks always give very accurate time and there is little scope for errors in timekeeping.

In fact, even computers rely on atomic clocks and that is the reason why we can now always know the exact time, no matter in which part of the world we are located.

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