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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.
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