Government Funded Atomic Clock On a Chip 134
An anonymous reader writes "Today most applications that require accurate atomic clock readings — from sorting separately routed telecommunications packets to timing simultaneous demolition charges — usually refer to signals from global positioning systems (GPS). For applications where GPS is unavailable, such as indoors, underground, undersea or on the battlefield where electronic jamming is present, large, heavy, power hungry hardware atomic clocks were needed. Now an atomic clock-on-a-chip is available that is the result of 10 years of government-funded research and development. The chip is not cheap — $1,500 — but it costs less than conventional atomic clocks and the price is sure to go down as manufacturing gears up to meet demand from military applications."
Re:Thanks but no thanks! (Score:4, Funny)
This orange represents your head. This tinfoil represents... well, tinfoil. This microwave represents... well, just watch.
Re:Thanks but no thanks! (Score:4, Funny)
So the laser simply asks the cesium what time it is.
...millions of times per second. Sort of like the world's most annoying child:
"What time is it? Are we there yet? What time is it?"
Re:OXCOs are cheap and common right now (Score:5, Funny)
As for time dilation of any kind, there are maybe five people (all of them Doctors of some sort) who care in anything other than a merit-badge sort of way.
Who's one of them?