Atomic Clocks
Atomic clocks are very precise and have nearly no clock drift. The rotation of the Earth itself actually is less precise than modern atomic clocks used as time standards. Thus to keep the Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) in line with the Earth's rotation, a leap second is added to some years.
Read more about this topic: Clock Drift
Famous quotes containing the words atomic and/or clocks:
“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“Weighing the steadfastness and state
Of some mean things which here below reside,
Where birds like watchful clocks the noiseless date
And intercourse of times divide,”
—Henry Vaughan (1622–1695)