What’s the time? - Marcus Brigstocke, Leon Lobo, Louise Devoy
Episode
42 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Relationships, Investing, Fundraising & VC
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓Atomic clock precision: Current cesium atomic clocks maintain accuracy to one second over 158 million years by counting 9.2 billion cycles of cesium electron transitions. Next-generation optical clocks will achieve stability at the eighteenth decimal place, sensitive enough to detect one centimeter elevation changes through gravitational effects.
- ✓Digital infrastructure dependency: Modern telecommunications, energy grids, and financial trading systems require microsecond-level time synchronization to function. Stock exchanges execute tens of thousands of trades per second, all requiring precise coordination. GPS satellites and network time protocol servers distribute this timing globally through multiple redundant pathways to prevent system failures.
- ✓Leap second controversy: Earth's variable rotation requires periodic one-second adjustments to keep atomic time synchronized with solar days, but these unpredictable insertions disrupt digital systems. The international metrology community debates switching to leap minutes or abandoning Earth-based corrections entirely, with some companies like Google already smearing corrections across entire days.
- ✓Historical navigation breakthrough: The 1884 International Meridian Conference designated Greenwich as zero degrees longitude because most shipping companies already used British charts. Before atomic clocks, the Belleville family physically carried synchronized chronometers across London from the 1830s to 1940s, selling accurate time to instrument makers who trusted human delivery over telegraph networks.
What It Covers
The Royal Observatory Greenwich celebrates 350 years of timekeeping innovation, exploring how time measurement evolved from pendulum clocks to atomic standards accurate within one second over 158 million years, and why modern digital infrastructure depends on microsecond-level synchronization.
Key Questions Answered
- •Atomic clock precision: Current cesium atomic clocks maintain accuracy to one second over 158 million years by counting 9.2 billion cycles of cesium electron transitions. Next-generation optical clocks will achieve stability at the eighteenth decimal place, sensitive enough to detect one centimeter elevation changes through gravitational effects.
- •Digital infrastructure dependency: Modern telecommunications, energy grids, and financial trading systems require microsecond-level time synchronization to function. Stock exchanges execute tens of thousands of trades per second, all requiring precise coordination. GPS satellites and network time protocol servers distribute this timing globally through multiple redundant pathways to prevent system failures.
- •Leap second controversy: Earth's variable rotation requires periodic one-second adjustments to keep atomic time synchronized with solar days, but these unpredictable insertions disrupt digital systems. The international metrology community debates switching to leap minutes or abandoning Earth-based corrections entirely, with some companies like Google already smearing corrections across entire days.
- •Historical navigation breakthrough: The 1884 International Meridian Conference designated Greenwich as zero degrees longitude because most shipping companies already used British charts. Before atomic clocks, the Belleville family physically carried synchronized chronometers across London from the 1830s to 1940s, selling accurate time to instrument makers who trusted human delivery over telegraph networks.
Notable Moment
Physicist Louis Essen demonstrated in the mid-twentieth century that cesium atoms regulate time more accurately than Earth's rotation itself, fundamentally shifting humanity's reference point from planetary motion to quantum mechanics and revolutionizing how civilization measures duration at the atomic level.
Episode Transcript
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside The UK. Make their holiday unforgettable with a gift that says it all from Pandora Jewelry. A gift that tells a story and shows you know theirs. That doesn't just sparkle, but speaks. From new festive charms to forever rings and personal engravings. This season, give a gift that's perfectly theirs. Whether you're shopping for a shiny surprise for your significant other, matching bracelets to celebrate your friendship, or a heartfelt gift for a family member, say more this holiday season with Pandora. Shop now at pandora.net or visit your closest Pandora store. You've got a big day, so you use unstoppable scent boosters to give your laundry nonstop freshness. So no matter how long the day goes, you Can't stop this power, this walk, this pose, this strut, this look, this talk. Your clothes will be so fresh, you can confidently into that end of the day meeting like a Boss, boss, boss, boss, boss, boss, boss is let's talk business in my office. Add new unstoppables beads to your watch for twenty four hour nonstop freshness so you can smell unstoppable. Your charitable giving stack just called, and it wants a glow up. Donor advised funds or DAFs are the fastest growing giving vehicle for a reason. Wren Technology is already used by the top institutions in the country for their DAFs. With Wren, you can oversee your charitable accounts, recommend grants, and deep dive on your giving history, all in one place. Wren just makes giving a lot less taxing. Learn more at reninc.com. Hello. I'm Brian Cox. And I am What Remains of Robin Ince. It's the nature of entropy, sadly. This is the infinite monkey cage from the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. And, that is why, of course, the show will be beginning with the pips. For legal reasons, we can't play the last pit because apparently it scares the radio four news reader who thinks they've forgotten to do the news and be ready for it. That last tone activates Gladys Knight. See, I think it might end up just being I knew this would happen. The the the the pips was written by, you know, these two sisters in America in the late nineteen thirties, like happy birthday. And if you play the whole pit, it's always, oh my god, the beep. She's got to pay £500 to their estate now. Now today's monkey cage is about time because the show is being recorded at the Greenwich Observatory in its three hundred and fiftieth year. In 1675, King Charles the second signed a royal warrant for an Observatory to improve navigation at seas, and the building was designed by Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke. You've never sounded more like Simon Schama than you do now. And that worries me because I think you're gonna branch out as if you're not on television enough. The fact you're then gonna start doing history stuff as well. And as …
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