Nuclear Crisis Stopped Time In Japan 188
angry tapir writes "The problems at Japan's Fukushima-1 nuclear plant have had an unexpected impact on the country's ability to keep time: a transmitter that sends the national time signal to many thousands of clocks and watches has been forced offline making the timepieces a little less reliable than usual."
Worst headline ever. (Score:5, Informative)
Not only did time not stop, but the clocks didn't even stop. They just aren't being synchronized anymore. Oh no!
Re:Worst headline ever. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not only did time not stop, but the clocks didn't even stop. They just aren't being synchronized anymore. Oh no!
In Japan, a country that considers a train late if it arrives more than 20 seconds later than scheduled, that's pretty bad.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Worst headline ever. (Score:5, Informative)
I have a hunch that their perspective has changed somewhat in the past month or so.
Perspective on what? Time?
I really doubt it. If anything, the near-perfect organisation of Japan has saved countless lives.
Re: (Score:2)
I think that they meant that they're just a bit less concerned with trains being 20 seconds behind as "late".
Re: (Score:2)
I think that they meant that they're just a bit less concerned with trains being 20 seconds behind as "late".
I doubt this will be an issue for months (as clocks won't have lost 20 seconds already), but on a very busy railway line a single train being a minute or two late can cause trains on other routes to be late, and that causes other trains to be late, etc.
(e.g. a train in a platform is delayed, so the following train can't use the platform and must wait on the main line. In the mean time, the express train that's supposed to pass it on the passing line can't, as the way is blocked. The express train is delayed
Re:Worst headline ever. (Score:5, Interesting)
With tens of thousands of suicides a year, I think not. Another example of a modern society self-driven to neurosis.
The WHO even disputes Japan's definition of suicide that makes the reported numbers an estimated three times lower.
Re:Worst headline ever. (Score:5, Insightful)
THANK YOU. Last time I pointed out Japan's high suicide rate I was modded down. It's real, and it's a real consequence of a high-pressure lifestyle. Japan is to life what Survivor is to television. The weakest links get voted off the island... forcibly. Emotional and mental abuse are real kinds of abuse.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I'll bite. What is Japan's definition of suicide?
Ever see John Belushi do his Samurai bit on SNL in the 1970s?
Re: (Score:2)
You gotta be kidding. Or are you talking about some Anime Japan and not the real thing?
If anything, the authorities were caught completely flat-footed and are still scrambling. People in many areas were left for days to their own devices with no official response anywhere in sight.
Confusion, incompetence, constant cover-ups, unresponsiveness, nepotism ... those are the defining characteristics of Japan's bureaucracy, be it gove
Re: (Score:2)
If anything, the authorities were caught completely flat-footed and are still scrambling. People in many areas were left for days to their own devices with no official response anywhere in sight.
Like the US after Katrina.
Did we export the head of FEMA to Japan?
Re: (Score:3)
Japan doesn't have the federalized system of government like exists in America with dual sovereignty and a federal government that literally can't act until after the state government gets its act together. Katrina was a royal screw up of the Louisiana government (not to mention New Orleans itself was in total chaos effectively without a government after Katrina), but that fact was lost on most international news media.
FEMA, after Katrina, acted about as fast as it was legally permitted to act. That Louis
Re:Worst headline ever. (Score:4, Interesting)
You mean if I don't synchronize my clock with the atomic clock more than every few days, it will be more than 20 seconds off?
Most wristwatches I've owned have a disclaimer in the manual that they keep time with a margin of error ±15 seconds per month. Those are the cheap Casios. I'm sure TV stations etc. have a better clock than me.
Re:Worst headline ever. (Score:4, Insightful)
Indeed, due to reception issues it would be highly unwise to rely on a radio time broadcast for accuracy in important situations. You can have a mix of time sources (GPS, NTP, RDS etc.) but basically you need a reasonably accurate clock for when they are unavailable. Fortunately modules with better than 10 seconds/month are extremely cheap.
I got back from Japan on Sunday, there did not seem to be any time related problems. I didn't even know about it until this story.
Radio clocks not that accurate anyway (Score:2)
You can get down into the hundreds of nanoseconds accuracy with GPS. Radio clocks aren't that good, WWVB is only accurate to a millisecond or so in good propagation conditions. Shortwave is even less predictable. Still, good enough for "household" use.
I live in California, and my WWVB signal is marginal, so my radio clocks only sync up onc a week or so. Still, they are accurate to within a fraction of a second. I can get still better with NTP.
Re: (Score:2)
In Japan, a country that considers a train late if it arrives more than 20 seconds later than scheduled ...
As someone who lived in Japan for 7 years, HA HA HA. Right. Trains are mostly timely but arrival times vary widely from published schedules, frequently by multiple minutes.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually I liked the headline. It made me think immediately of some sort of plot for a Japanese Anime series that obviously featured cyborgs disguised as hot school girls.
Caesium clock versus wild Caesium (Score:4, Funny)
Very sorry for being 28 picoseconds late! The radioactive Caesium in the air put out my atomic clock
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Very sorry for being 28 picoseconds late!
Only 28 psecs? Curses! That's still not enough to let us fool your millisecond trading systems.
Igor, it is necessary to calibrate our earthquake generators a second time.
Yes, let us triple the taco fuel!
Re:Caesium clock versus wild Caesium (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually this is good if it disrupts the microsecond arbitrage in Wall Street.
Re: (Score:2)
a French poem about stopping the time, (Score:3, Interesting)
-- French poem by Lamartine http://astronad.voila.net/Lamartine.htm [voila.net]
And? (Score:4, Insightful)
Good thing there is still GPS, NTP, etc.
Worst case a few clocks have to fall back to quartz and lose a couple seconds a day, no?
Re:And? (Score:4, Interesting)
Good thing there is still GPS, NTP, etc.
That's what I've been wondering. With constant GPS signal all over the place, what do we need land-based atomic clock synchronisation for?
Re: (Score:3)
You put all of your eggs in one basket, and sooner or later that basket is going to be wiped out by a tsunami/quake.
Re:And? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what I've been wondering. With constant GPS signal all over the place, what do we need land-based atomic clock synchronisation for?
You put all of your eggs in one basket, and sooner or later that basket is going to be wiped out by a tsunami/quake.
If a tsunami or quake takes out GPS satellites in orbit 20km above the surface of the Earth I think accurate time-keeping will be the least of anyone's worries.
Re: (Score:2)
If a tsunami or quake takes out GPS satellites in orbit 20km above the surface of the Earth I think accurate time-keeping will be the least of anyone's worries.
- well actually, if that happen I would know what to be mostly suprised about - a 20km tsunami wave or a falling GPS satellite.
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, the disaster that takes out satelites would be a different one, like a solar flail, or some man made jamming.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
20km? I've got news for you - we have airplanes that fly that high.
GPS is a wee bit higher than 20km above the Earth's surface. Try 20000 km above the Earth's surface instead.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And they're still set by the ground. They drift.
Re: (Score:3)
It is actually on Wikipedia: they are synchronized from the ground. Not like your "atomic clock" on the wall of course, but they do receive regular updates on their exact orbits, and because of gravity's effect on time, their exact orbit has an impact on their time, so that is corrected with those updates.
So they rely on their own internal atomic clocks, but they're also synchronized to some extent from the ground. I'm not sure whether a land-based atomic clock is involved, but it'd surprise me if there was
Re: (Score:2)
The GPS satellites have accurate atomic clocks, but I believe they aren't of the most accurate type available.
The master clock on the ground is of a different type that is even more accurate, I think. I'm assuming it is probably derived from NIST-F1, which is of a design that is likely impractical for use on a sat.
Re: (Score:2)
Overall, the GPS system is more accurate than any single atomic time keeping device, because it derives its timing from multiple sources, rather than a single oscillation system.
The timing where I used to work was normally sub-7 n
Re: (Score:2)
Good point.
Re: (Score:3)
Geosynchronous orbit actually wouldn't be very good: you'd need a more powerful transmitter, you'd be fighting with other users for the available orbital slots, and you'd need to put some of the satellites out of the equatorial plane (with all the complications that entails).
Low orbit would reduce the power of the transmitters needed, but would greatly increase the number of satellites needed, and atmospheric drag limits satellite life (or requires providing the satellite with much more station-keeping fuel
Re: (Score:2)
Just launch some extra GPS satelites then. If one of them is taken out by a 20 million meter high tsunami, at least we'll have some backups.
Re: (Score:2)
I think you just wrote the script for the next SyFy movie of the week!
Re: (Score:2)
The other reason why this radio-based synchronization signal is good to keep around is because it i
GPS needs terrestrial atomic clocks. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The GPS satellites use these time signals from these atomic clocks to sych.
GPS satellites each have their own atomic clock. They don't depend on land-based clocks as far as I know.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I hope you've seen that I'm actually wrong about them not depending on land-based clocks at all. They all do have their own atomic clock, but due to relativistic effects, they're not accurate enough. So they still need to be synced regularly, also with data on the exact orbit they're in.
Re: (Score:2)
Did you not think before you wrote that? Do you think that the "atomic clock" you bought for $20 at Wal-Mart has it's very own atomic clock in it? How and why in god's fucking name do you think they put an "atomic clock" in the satellite?
It might have been worthwhile to read up a bit before you flipped out like that. A GPS satellite does not cost $20 at Walmart, and does contain an atomic clock.
Re: (Score:2)
I stand corrected. They are indeed synchronized from the ground. Though not in the way a simple Walmart clock is synchronized.
Interesting detail is that GPS time is officially a few seconds off compared to UTC.
Re: (Score:2)
Now you're just being an ass. I never attempted to appear an expert on anything, and I was correct in everything I stated as unqualified fact.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't have GPS signal in my bedroom. DCF77 [wikipedia.org] on the other hand, is reliable.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's what I've been wondering. With constant GPS signal all over the place, what do we need land-based atomic clock synchronisation for?
Cost. Clocks that sync to LF signals (WWVB, DCF77, JJY, etc.) are based on cheap off-the-shelf chipsets. GPS sync costs an order of magnitude more.
Availability. GPS needs to see the sky. It doesn't work very well (if at all) inside buildings. LF time signals do.
...laura
Re: (Score:2)
GPS receivers are radio receivers. Those to pick up time signals can be considerably simpler and cheaper than those to handle signals from GPS satellites. In the case of those in Japan some are so simple that they can only pick up a single frequency...
Re: (Score:2)
Good thing there is still GPS, NTP, etc.
Good thing GPS is still useful for something there. All the recent land surveys done there via GPS are all off by 8 feet or so now.
Re: (Score:2)
Your watch really does suck. The casio on my wrist (which is helped by having my arm as a thermal sink & source), is rarely off by more than 10-15 seconds in the 8 (?) months between daylight and standard time. I say that seconds, because I rarely checked the seconds for accuracy, as there is nothing in my life which requires my wristwatch to be more precise than a minute or so.
As for accuracy, it almost exactly 3 minutes fast. That happens to be about how long it takes me to stop what I'm doing and st
This site has really jumped the shark (Score:5, Insightful)
I know it's late, and I think this may have been intended as humorous, but really, guys? Has it come to this?
Re:This site has really jumped the shark (Score:5, Insightful)
I know it's late
The Japanese currently sure don't... HAR HAR HARHAR
Has it come to this?
Sadly yes. The site does tend to more fluff, slashvertising, idle shit and biased politics articles than anything really interesting. I'm betting that by 2012 we'll have videos of cats on here.
Perhaps the new dysfunctional slashdot design should've clued most of us in that we should be leaving for something new.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm betting that by 2012 we'll have videos of cats on here.
So that WILL be the end of the world. I guess the Myans were right.
Re: (Score:2)
http://idle.slashdot.org/story/10/09/10/1723209/What-Happens-When-You-Let-100-Cats-Loose-Inside-An-IKEA [slashdot.org]
I guess WWV has been down for a while now, because 2012 happened 1.5 years ago.
Re: (Score:2)
I guess WWV has been down for a while now, because 2012 happened 1.5 years ago.
Well, that's a serious case of clock drift right there. Damn you Japan!
Re:This site has really jumped the shark (Score:5, Funny)
I'm betting that by 2012 we'll have videos of cats on here.
Or photos of CAT 5s, at least.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm betting that by 2012 we'll have videos of cats on here.
Or photos of CAT 5s, at least.
Don't forget script kitties.
Re: (Score:3)
Most sites have impossible un-threaded crappy comment systems,with crappy moderation etc.
I want to see 5-30 interesting comments on any given story,not 250 I have to sort through myself. I would also like there to be a higher percentage of people 'in the know' than the average population.
Is there another site just like slashdot basically,but with better
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:This site has really jumped the shark (Score:5, Funny)
It's sharks all the way up.
Better theory: (Score:3)
It was Hiro!
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks for getting my hopes up... (Score:2, Funny)
"Nuclear Crisis Stopped" is not a good way to lead off a story on Japan.
My short attention span plays horrible games with me.
Re: (Score:2)
A man with one watch, knows what the time is (Score:3)
A man with two watches, is never sure.
I guess a man in Japan with a radio signal watch has no clue right now.
have too many damn things in my apartment to change when daylight saving time hits. The coffee machine, the microwave, the clock on the wall, my stereo system main power supply . . . etc . . .
Re: (Score:2)
It doesn't matter how many watches you have. You never really know the time without a sextant, a spirit level, an almanac, and a clear sky.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Without the signal they simply use their quartz timing. If you think the clocks are simply displaying some received signal for time,that isn't how it works. They have a clue.
My Casio Pathfinder is always accurate to within a good deal less than a second, and the face is a solar panel so it keeps itself charged.
I wouldn't have it any other way.
Media idiocy (Score:5, Insightful)
This is about as accurate, realistic, rational and un-hyped a headline as here has yet been regarding the entire nuclear incident...
Re: (Score:2)
Wait until the follow up when they add or subtract the necessary motes of time to re-sync the national time signal. It will be either
Japan time travels to the past
or
Japan returns Back to the Future
Won't somebody think of the censors! (Score:3)
I suppose this means any Simpsons episodes that don't display the correct time on their clocks will have to be banned.
And don't get me started on those times when the Bart and Lisa are late for school!
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
And don't get me started on those times when the Bart and Lisa are late for school!
Yes! We have to ban every episode showing schools. Many Japanese children don't even have a school anymore!
Bob Marley again... (Score:3, Funny)
I thought we should have no fear for atomic energy, mon, cause they could not stop de time!
Re: (Score:2)
Unanswered questions (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
This video has the answer to all your questions about this incident: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7e0777z7AY [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Probably because of regulatory constraints that require an engineer at the transmitter's control point (where the transmitter can be turned off quickly) in case something goes wrong with the transmitter. It could also be a safety issue, since the transmitter may have high voltage amplifiers that may catch fire if left unattended.
Re: (Score:2)
the transmitter may have high voltage amplifiers that may catch fire if left unattended.
TRANSMITTER: "Is it me or is it getting warm in here/"
ENGINEER: "Cut that out! Don't try that stunt again!"
TRANSMITTER: (Lights dim slightly) "OK, but just you wait!"
Could happen, I suppose.
Someone has to wind the atomic clock daily (Score:2)
This post may have been brought to you by someone whose physics is a bit pre-Newtonian.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Lost... (Score:2)
Call Daniel Faraday ASAP!
they dont have internet time servers? (Score:2)
MS offers the service by default so if u r connected to the internet, your clock self adjusts, or...wait.....that's right....you never use MS for mission critical stuff.....never mind.
hmmm (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
"You Americans have clocks. We have time." - Some random Mexican I asked the time of in Mexico.
Proving, once again, that there are dicks in every nation around the world ...
In Soviet Russia ... (Score:2)
...nuclear crisis stops you.
We need a Hospital & Soylent Green Factory Com (Score:2)
The doctor takes a look at you, the patient, and your insurance status . . . and decides if you are treated, or become Soylent Green. The sales of the Soylent Green would finance the medical system.
Nurse: "You seem to not like the food here in the hospital?"
Patient: "No I don't."
Nurse: "Well do you know what will be served tomorrow? . . . You!"
Re: (Score:2)
Whoops! Wrong thread . . . loose nut behind the keyboard . . .
Oh my! (Score:2)
That's no nuclear reactor! (Score:2)
So Radioactive. Bubbling Water. Controls Time.
That's Hot Tub Time Machine!
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)