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

Poul-Henning Kamp phk at phk.freebsd.dk
Tue Jan 17 12:52:59 EST 2006


In message <20060117.184050.74742848.cfmd at bredband.net>, Magnus Danielson writes:
>From: shoppa at trailing-edge.com (Tim Shoppa)
>Subject: Re: [time-nuts] List of time synchronization hardware and software
>Date: Mon, 16 Jan 2006 20:20:55 -0500
>Message-ID: <20060117012055.37824BA483E at mini-me.trailing-edge.com>
>
>> James Maynard <james.h.maynard at usa.net> wrote:
>> 
>> > Brooke Clarke wrote:
>> > > Astronomical methods, such as sundials might deserve a place on the list.
>> > Indeed.  Sundials, or menhirs, such as those at Stonehenge!
>> 
>> Even better, pulsars. They have a period that is usually the same order
>> of magnitude as a second, and some of them are regular enough that they
>> are similar in stability as an atomic clock (how many of us have
>> cesium beam tubes that will last for billions of years, hmmm?)

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 ?".

I guess we think we know what they are now, but the argument is
still pretty powerful as we don't know how stable we can expect
pulsar rates to be in the long term.

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.




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