Atomic Clock - Keeping the ticking of the world

When people think most of the digital age and its computers, satellites and mobile phones, the silicon chip is the mind of all the people. Yet despite its importance in shaping the world around us, many of the technologies we take for granted would not be possible without the atomic clock.

The first atomic clock was developed in 1955 by British born Dr Louis Essen who worked during the Second World War, the high-frequency radar, which led him to develop a resonance wavemeter, which was successfully used to measure the speed of light.

Using the same technology that has developed the first accurate atomic clock in 1955 at the National Physical Laboratory in the United Kingdom. It is based on the resonance of a cesium atom.

According to quantum theory, atoms can exist in certain quantized energy states depending on the orbits of the electrons from their nuclei. A clock operates by exposing cesium atoms to microwaves until they vibrate at one of their resonant frequencies. It was discovered that an atom of cesium that resonate 9192631770 Hertz (times per second).

Because of this precision in the resonance and the high number of oscillations atomic clocks (sometimes referred to as cesium oscillators) are extremely accurate. Essen first device was accurate to a second thousand years, but the next generation of atomic clocks are so accurate that does not lose a second to several hundred million years.

Because of this high level of accuracy problems in the way in which time the structure. traditionally GMT (Greenwich Meantime) was the basis of time. GMT is based on the principle that the sun is high in the sky at noon (or on the line of the meridian of Greenwich). Unfortunately, as the 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 of the Moon.

If nothing was done about it then perhaps the International Atomic Time (TAI - said the time of atomic clocks) through the synchronization with the UTC and, finally, the night would end with the day (though in different millennia).

Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), was developed to counter this phenomenon. It is based on the IAT, but represent the slower rotation of the Earth from time to time by adding "leap seconds", of which 33 have been added since 1970.

Atomic clocks are critical for telecommunications networks.Voice and transfers of data to travel around the world in packaging must be marked as the time is the only point of reference for a computer can be used to reassemble the packets.

The atomic clock also allows satellite communication possible, because the speed of light is so fast (900,000 km per second), a small variation over time could create huge differences. Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), such as GPS (Global Positioning System) are heavily dependent on the atomic clock synchronization signal is a GPS receiver uses to triangulate a position.

Thank you for atomic clocks and devices such as NTP (Network Time Protocol), which distributes an atomic clock timing reference received no radio or GPS receiver, a computer network, the synchronization of computers UTC. Thank you for this technology, electronic transactions can now be achieved within five nano-seconds. Without these technologies in online trading as the stock market, buying a plane ticket and even auction sites on the Internet would not be possible.