The U.S. government relies on atomic clocks to keep accurate time. These clocks are located at a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) facility near Denver. Recently, a powerful windstorm cut off power to this facility, causing a slight delay in the official U.S. time.
When the storm hit, the backup generator failed as well. As a result, NIST’s time calculations were off by 4.8 microseconds. To put that in perspective, it takes about 350,000 microseconds for a human to blink. A NIST spokesperson, Rebecca Jacobson, explained that this drift meant the official time was very slightly slower than it should have been.
Since 2007, the U.S. time standard, known as NIST UTC, is determined by the Commerce Secretary and the U.S. Navy. While NIST uses atomic clocks, the larger global standard is UTC, which several countries contribute to.
NIST operates 16 atomic clocks at its Boulder campus. These clocks, including hydrogen masers and cesium beam clocks, measure time with incredible precision. Despite the outage, the clocks themselves continued to work thanks to battery backups. The real problem was a failure in the connection that links these clocks to NIST’s time distribution systems.
Jeff Sherman, a research physicist at NIST, mentioned that some staff on-site managed to restore power using a diesel generator. The small time drift might not impact most people, but it could affect critical systems like telecommunications and GPS. NIST has systems in place to support high-end users who rely on accurate timekeeping.
By Saturday evening, power was restored, and efforts were underway to fix the time drift. This incident underscores the importance of dependable timekeeping in our technology-driven world.
For more detailed information about official U.S. time, visit the NIST time page.
