Other technologies too such as global positioning and air traffic control are reliant on atomic clocks to provide accuracy (and in the case of air traffic is paramount for safety). This is why UTC is vital for the internet. Or what about seat reservation if two people on different sides of the globe book a seat at the same time, who gets the seat. Imagine you are bidding for an item on the Internet and you place a bid a few seconds before the end, the last and highest bid, would it be fair to lose the item because the clock on your ISP was a little fast and the computer therefore thought the bidding was over. So much trade is done across continents in fields such as the stock exchange, seat reservation and online auctioning that exact time is crucial. For this purpose a universal time zone was developed, known as UTC ( Coordinated Universal Time), which is based on the time told by atomic clocks.Ītomic clocks are incredibly accurate, losing only a second in every hundred million years, which is staggering when you compare it to digital clocks that will lose that much time in a week.īut why do we need such accuracy in timekeeping? Much of the technology we employ in modern times is designed for global communication. Many of the ways we trade, communicate and travel are now solely dependent on timing from atomic clock sources.Ī global community often means that we have to communicate with people on other areas of the world and in other time zones. Atomic clocks have, unbeknown to most people, revolutionised our technology.
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