requires very good clocks that measure short times
electromagnetic waves move very quickly
use atomic clocks came into being during World War II; nothing to do with GPS -physicists wanted to test Einsteins ideas about gravity and time previous clocks relied on pendulums early atomic clocks looked at vibrations of quartz crystal keep time to < 1/1000th second per day ..not accurate enough to assess affect of gravity on time Einstein predicted that clock on Mt. Everest would run 30 millionths of a second faster than clock at sea level needed to look at oscillations of atoms principle behind atomic clocks atoms absorb or emit electomagnetic energy in discrete amounts that correspond to differences in energy between different configurations of the atoms when atom goes from one energy state to lower one, it emits an electromagnetic wave of characteristic frequency known as resonant frequency these resonant frequencies are identical for every atom of a given type: cesium 133 atoms: 9,192,631,770 cycles/second cesium can be used to create extraordinarily precise clock (advances also led to using hydrogen and rubidium) GPS clocks are cesium clocks What is Caesium 133 atoms? Caesium or cesium[note 1] is a chemical element with symbol Cs and atomic number 55. It is a soft, silvery-gold alkali metal with a melting point of 28 C (82 F), which makes it one of only five elemental metals that are liquid at or near room temperature. Caesium-based atomic clocks observe electromagnetic transitions in the hyperfine structure of caesium-133 atoms and use it as a reference point. The first accurate caesium clock was built by Louis Essen in 1955 at the National Physical Laboratory in the UK.[72] They have been improved repeatedly over the past half-century, and form the basis for standards-compliant time and frequency measurements. These clocks measure frequency with an error of 2 to 3 parts in 1014, which would correspond to a time measurement accuracy of 2 nanoseconds per day, or one second in 1.4 million years. The latest versions are accurate to better than 1 part in 1015, which means they would be off by about 2 seconds since the extinction of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago,[8] and has been regarded as "the most accurate realization of a unit that mankind has yet achieved."[69] What is a Cesium Atomic Clock?
Definition of 1 second Duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom.