These days there's no excuse for being late - Australia is running on time with the rest of the world.
Australia's official time keeper is CSIRO's National Measurement Laboratory (NML) in Lindfield, where Dr Peter Fisk and his colleagues ensure that Australia's 'second' is synchronised with the rest of the world. The NML maintains Australia's second - a standard time measurement - with accuracy of better than 2 millionths of a millionth of a second.
"Once upon a time, time was measured using sundials, hour glasses and chronometers. Now we use atomic clocks," Dr Fisk says.
"Modern technologies such as telecommunications, computer networks and navigation systems vitally depend on the accurate measurement of time," he says.
The NML will update some existing technology of the national system as a result of changes made to the National Measurement Act in June this year. The amended Act requires a common legal time reference be maintained and has placed responsibility for keeping it with the NML.
The other aspect will be improving the transfer of this time reference to end users. Several methods are presently in use in Australia - a dedicated radio station, Telstra landlines, a domestic communications satellite and signals from the Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites. The use of GPS will be increased, as it is the system that will be able to transfer time throughout Australia with the greatest accuracy.
"Global Positioning System satellites will eventually be used to legally transfer time throughout Australia with accuracies better than a few milliseconds," Dr Fisk said.
Dr Fisk will be talking at the Metrology Society of Australia (MSA 97) conference in Melbourne today. The international conference will bring together experts in metrology (the science of measurement) from industry, government, universities and the NML.
Other delegates will discuss measurement in education and sport, chemical metrology and measurement in the automobile industry. The Conference will take place November 26 - 28, Old Arts Building, Melbourne University.
Session time: Wednesday, November 26 at 2.30pm.
More information:
Dr Peter Fisk 0419 550 393 (during the conference)
or 02 9413 7221 (office)