Do you have the correct time?
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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Hotel Mats Espoossa on enemmän kuin hotelli. Meillä olet kuin kotonasi. Kompaktista studiosta tilavaan huoneistoon, jossa oma keittiö, parve ja jopa sauna. Oli sitten työmatkalla pidemmällä komennuksella tai minilomalla. Meillä viihdut kuin kotona hotelin palveluilla. Hotel Mats Espoon matin kylässä ajattomasti tyylkäs. Aina nykyaikainen. Hahay Jos mä saisin valita, OP koti myysi meidän kodinsa. Miksi? Tää oli vasta mun neljäs esittely. Mä tunnen, että se pariskunta tekee tarjouksen, ehkä. Jätä asunnon myynti OP-kodin kiinteistön välittäjän huoleksi. Saat tutkitusti parasta asiantuntemusta paikallisista asuntomarkkinoista. Tutkimuslähteenä Suomi tänään kiinteistön välitystutkimus 2025.
OP-koti on hyvä valinta elämäsi tilanteisiin.
Welcome to Inside Science from the BBC World Service. I'm Tom Whipple. This week, why is the Earth revolving too fast? Why does that mean that time is ticking for something called the leap second? And why is Bill Bryson using the word debauchery in the context of Britain's most respected scientific institution? Something that never evolves too fast is the return of the not at all debauched Kit Yates to Inside Science. The mathematician has been searching the journals for the best of the other stories. Kit, time is already ticking for us, so get on with it.
What have you found? So, Tom, this week I'm going to be finding out exactly how much of a hot-blooded predator T-Rex really was. And in keeping with that theme, I'll tell you about a new record temperature for the survival of complex life.
Brilliant. Well, look, TikTok. Um, it all went wrong in 1955. That was when we made a clock that was too accurate, more accurate than the sun. And we have been dealing with the consequences: technological, meteorological, philosophical, ever since. Now, this tale of excited cesium atoms, excited diplomats, and a fudge called the Leapsecond may be coming to its denouement. Next month, a group of experts From around the world are going to be meeting to decide exactly what time it is. Does that make sense? I suspect not. But we went to the National Physical Laboratory in West London to go to the place where UK time is made and had it explained to us by Setnam Shimar, principal scientist at NPL's time and frequency department.
Okay, so we are in the UK's National Timescale Lab at the National Physical Laboratory. And this is the laboratory where we uh generate the UK's official source of time.
What what w what does that mean? Um which one of these many boxes is the clock and and how does it spread around the country?
This lab is like the the nerve center where we generate the national timescale, but in fact we have uh several atomic clocks around the site. One of those clocks in a different lab is the reference clock. And all the others are used as backup. clocks and we compare their signals uh continuously in case the reference clock fails, then we can fall back to one of the other clocks.
And why do we need it? My wristwatch isn't connected to your clock.
There are a lot of users of accurate time around the country. We have uh for example, telecommunications electrical grid operators, financial institutes that timestamp financial transactions and its timing is also used in transportation, in uh positioning. in emergency services and so on and so on. Many of those industries and some of them are national critical national infrastructure, they get their time from satellite navigation systems, for example GPS. But some of them, the most critical ones, get the time directly from us. So timing is important in modern technology. What is an atomic clock? a clock that's based on atomic processes such as like in the cesium atom. And these clocks are very accurate clocks and they are
far more stable than any other type of clock that has ever been developed, including keeping time using the sun, which is solar time.
Basically the s the sun has always told humans the time and we've made these clocks where we've been trying to see what the sun's doing and we've made the mistake of making one that's better than the sun.
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