Colorado power outages disrupt atomic clock in Boulder

Power shut off across Colorado last week as hurricane-force winds swept across the state. In Boulder, one of those outages caused time to briefly stand still.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Internet Time Service Facility in Boulder lost power Wednesday afternoon, disrupting the agency’s atomic clock, spokesperson Rebecca Jacobson said.

The atomic clock, which uses cesium atoms to measure the exact length of a second, is used for GPS satellite networks, data centers, laboratories, aerospace, telecommunications, power generation and other systems that require ultra-precise timekeeping.

“In short, the atomic ensemble time scale at our Boulder campus has failed due to a prolonged utility power outage,” NIST researcher Jeffrey Sherman wrote in an email announcing the outage to users. “One impact is that the Boulder Internet Time Services no longer have an accurate time reference.”

When the outage started on Wednesday, some of NIST’s on-campus time distribution systems lapsed before the backup generator kicked in, causing a four-microsecond delay to the atomic clock, Jacobson said.

At least one “crucial” generator at the facility failed after the outage, according to Sherman’s email.

“For comparison, it takes about 350,000 microseconds to blink or 150,000 microseconds to snap your fingers,” Jacobson said.

As of 5 p.m. Sunday, power had been restored to the Boulder Department of Commerce — which houses NIST, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration — according to NIST’s list of active internet time servers.

Staff was able to correct the time drift after power returned to the Boulder facility, and all NIST services were available as of Sunday evening, according to the server status list.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

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