WWVB "Atomic Clock" Problems

[kenglish]

Just learned that the North Tower for 60 KHz WWVB at Fort Collins, Colorado was damaged by high winds on April 7. They are now operating at half power, so you may have problems with all those devices that receive their time signals from there. They don't have a predicted date for when it will be fixed.

[CAwasinNJ]

Actually it's the north antenna that's operating and the south one that was disabled.

www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/time-distribution/radio-station-wwvb/wwvb-antenna-configuration-and
www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/time-distribution/radio-station-wwvb/wwvb-station-outages


On a slightly related note, there's some discussion about whether there will be a need for a negative leap second for the first time ever.

[kenglish]

I misread that on their chart.

Seems like there's been some controversy about how a legative leap second would work, and if a lot of devices would get wierd.

[CAwasinNJ]

Negative leap seconds aren't really a problem, though it's never been tested. Clocks would just go 23:59:57, 23:59:58, 00:00:00. Normal/positive leap seconds get messy since clocks don't have the extra second, which is 23:59:60. There are various ways to get around the problem.

There was a proposal a couple of years ago to do away with leap seconds completely for a hundred years. I don't know if anything ever came of that, but I don't think so.

[kenglish]

Here's an article that talks about the need for accurate time keeping on the moon. It goes in to some detail about Einstein's theories, and how leap seconds and such have to be used.
www.cnn.com/2024/05/30/science/lunar-time-zone-scale-nasa-artemis-scn/index.html

One of my friends in Australia actually worked on the most precise clock (at it's time), which proved Einstein was right. They made three identical clocks, and put one on the ground floor of building, and sent another up the elevator to the roof. One gained time, and one did not.
BTW, the friend is the guy who received the channel 2 signal from the Gamma Ray project in Delta, via a moonbounce reflection, on the day that the U of U was having their "First Light" party. Sure made their day.