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B O U L D E R, Colo., Dec. 30 — The excitement of New Year’s Eve came two days early for the nation’s timekeepers.

On Wednesday, government scientists unveiled a new atomic clock that is the most accurate in the United States and one of just two like it in the world.

The rest of the week will be downhill.
England Midnight Key Moment
Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology lab likely will wrap up their Y2K watch about 7 p.m. ET on New Year’s Eve, when midnight strikes in England, the starting point for Coordinated Universal Time.

If the changeover occurs without problems, the hallways of the mazelike federal lab will be deserted soon afterward.

But the excitement was running high when the clock, dubbed NIST F-1, was introduced.

In development for four years, the cesium atomic fountain clock is designed to keep time accurately to within a second’s loss or gain in 20 million years, compared with the older clock, which loses one second in 3 million years, the scientists said.

In Synch With Other Clock
Institute spokesman Fred McGehan said the lab put the clock in operation after it successfully delivered data to the Paris-based International Bureau of Weights and Measures, where the only other clock of its kind is located. It had nothing to do with New Year’s Eve or Y2K concerns, he said.

Old and new clocks will run simultaneously for about six months as a precautionary measure, he said.

Atomic clocks keep time by precisely counting the vibrations of atoms. The first version was invented in 1949 with the help of physicists who worked on the Manhattan Project.

NIST F-1 consists of a 3-foot vertical tube inside a taller structure. It uses lasers to cool cesium atoms, which form a ball. McGehan said lasers then toss the atoms into the air, much like one would toss a tennis ball, creating a fountain effect.

“What this allows us to do is to observe the atoms for much longer than we could with any previous clock,” McGehan said.

The observations of atoms, which are done by computers, create more accurate data to be sent to the Paris bureau where it is combined with other atomic clock data to develop the standard Coordinated Universal Time, the official world time, McGehan said.