[time-nuts] List of time synchronization hardware and software

Tim Shoppa shoppa at trailing-edge.com
Tue Jan 17 17:20:40 EST 2006


"Poul-Henning Kamp" <phk at phk.freebsd.dk> wrote:
> Pulsars were considered for timekeeping several times in the past, and in
> every instance the winning argument was "You want to base our timekeeping
> on some cosmic phenomena we don't even know what is ?".

Well, look at how dependent NTP and navigation and telecommunications
is on GPS sats today. There the uncertainty isn't the technology but
the military/government/funding/infrastructure behind them. Glonass
helps, as will Galileo. I'm a little surprised there aren't more
Glonass receivers out there (they seemed confined to a segment of
the surveying population although maybe my view isn't quite as global
as it should be.)

The threat isn't quite as big as the funding to the IERS = International
Earth Rotation Service. Cut off their budget and the earth may stop
turning, it's almost as bad as the Philosopher's Union!

Seafarers happily used astronomical fixes (along with a good
chronometer) for many years long before we understood stellar dynamics.
Full understanding of a phenomena is hardly necessary to use it as
part of a tool. That said, I think we understand pulsars a little
better than we did at first discovery (where the LGM hypothesis seemed
to stand out...)

Tim.



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