LONDON, Aug. 26 (UPI) -- An atomic clock that keeps time for Britain has been declared the most accurate long-term timekeeper in the world in an evaluation by international physicists.
The so-called cesium fountain clock is one of an elite group of clocks built by the timing labs in Europe, the United States and Japan as their national "primary frequency standard" for the measurement of time.
These national standards are averaged to produce International Atomic Time and Universal Coordinated Time, used worldwide for time-critical critical processes such as global communications, satellite navigation and surveying, and time stamping for the computerized transactions of financial and stock markets.
Methods that have been used to improve the U.K. clock also can be used to evaluate the cesium fountain clocks of other countries and substantially improve the world's most accurate methods of keeping time, U.S. and British scientists said in an article published in the online version of the journal Metrologia.
