Goals
The microgravity environment of space allows slowing of atoms to speeds well below those used in terrestrial atomic clocks, providing for substantial improvement in clock accuracy. This very accurate space clock will be compared continuously to the SUMO oscillator, and these two clocks (being fundamentally different) will provide a test of "local position invariance." Comparisons between the space and earth clocks will yield a related, but important measurement of the gravitational frequency shift. Finally, the signals conveyed to the ground through the GPS time-transfer system will serve as a truly international time standard available to anyone on earth.
Read more about this topic: Primary Atomic Reference Clock In Space
Famous quotes containing the word goals:
“We should stop looking to law to provide the final answer.... Law cannot save us from ourselves.... We have to go out and try to accomplish our goals and resolve disagreements by doing what we think is right. That energy and resourcefulness, not millions of legal cubicles, is what was great about America. Let judgment and personal conviction be important again.”
—Philip K. Howard, U.S. lawyer. The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America, pp. 186-87, Random House (1994)
“If you really think about it, everything is wonderful in this world, everything except for our thoughts and deeds when we forget about the loftier goals of existence, about our human dignity.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Despicable means used to achieve laudable goals renders the goals themselves despicable.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)