Cesium beam clocks (left) and hydrogen masers are among the types of atomic clocks used by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to determine official U.S. time. J. Sherman, R. Jacobson/National Institute of Standards and Technology
J. Sherman, R. Jacobson/National Institute of Standards and Technology
The U.S. government calculates the country’s official time using more than a dozen atomic clocks at a federal facility northwest of Denver.
But when a destructive windstorm knocked out power to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) laboratory in Boulder on Wednesday and a backup generator subsequently failed, time ever so