When most people ponder regarding the digital age and its computers, satellites and mobile phones, the silicone chip is at the foremost of people's minds. Yet, despite its importance in shaping the globe around us, many regarding the technologies that we take for granted should not be atom structure atomic clock. The first atomic clock was developed in 1955 by British born Dr Louis Essen who worked during WWII, on high-frequency radar which led him to develop a resonance wavemeter, that was used to successfully measure the velocity of light. Using similar technology he developed first accurate atomic clock in 1955 at the Local Physical Lab within the UK. It was based on the resonance regarding the caesium atom.
According to quantum theory, atoms can only exist in sure quantized life states depending on the orbits of electron about their nuclei. A cesium clock operates by exposing the atoms to microwaves until they oscillate at two of their resonant frequencies. It was discovered that a caesium atom should resonate at 9,192,631,770 hertz times a second. Due to the fact that of this exactness in resonance and the high many oscillations atomic clocks sometimes referred to as caesium oscillators are exceptionally accurate. Essen's first device was accurate to a 2nd in a thousand years but the next generation of atomic clocks are now so accurate they shall not lose a 2nd in multiple hundred million years.
Because of this high position of accuracy problems have occurred within the method we structure out timescales. traditionally GMT Greenwich Meantime was the basis of time. GMT is based on the principle that the Sun is highest within the sky at noon or over the Greenwich meridian line. Unfortunately as atomic clocks are so accurate it was discovered that the Earth itself is not as precise in its revolution and is often slowed by the gravitational effects regarding the moon. If nothing was done about this then eventually Worldwide Atomic Time TAI - the time told by atomic clocks should drift out of synchronisation with GMT and eventually night should drift into day albeit in multiple millennia.
Coordinated Universal Time UTC, was developed to counter this. It is based on TAI but accounts for the slowing regarding the Earth's rotation by adding occasional 'leap seconds', 33 of which have been added since the 1970's. Atomic clocks are crucial for telecommunication networks. Voice and data transfers that need to venture around the globe in packets wants to be time-stamped as time is the only reference spot a computer can use to reassemble the packets. Atomic clocks have also created satellite communication possible, as the velocity of light is so fast 900,000 km a sec a tiny variation in time should make massive differences.
Global Navigation Satellite Processes GNSS for example GPS Global Positioning System are heavily dependent on atomic clocks as the timing signal is what a GPS receiver uses to triangulate a location. Thanks to atomic clocks and devices for example the NTP server Network time Protocol that distributes an atomic clock timing reference received though neither a radio or GPS receiver, to a computer network, synchronising the computers to UTC. Thanks to technologies for example this, electronic transactions can now be done within 5 nano-seconds. Without such technologies online trading for example the stock exchange, buying an airline ticket and even Net auction websites should not be possible.
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