alt:
"a crude mspaint drawing of a cesium atomic clock diagram showing the hyperfine splitting of the 6s electron level with a frequency of 9,192,631,770 Hz and a wave length of 3.26 cm, which is the international standard for 1 second. rather interestingly, this exceptional precision of the tiny energy splitting (over 1000 times less than the thermal energy of the atom) means that after 1.4 million years we would only be off by 1 second. that's fascinating when you consider that they used to measure time based on earth's orbit, but that's not good enough. there are also rubidium atomic clocks which are less accurate but have the advantage of being much more portable which allows for syncing of cesium clocks. pretty neat! as an author's note, also nice to have a simpler clock to draw for a minute. these intricate clocks are getting to be rather time consuming i must admit. oh the irony."
