time & frequency – Cal Lab Magazine

What Time Is It on Mars? NIST Physicists have the answer.

December 11, 2025 Office

December 1, 2025 Ask someone on Earth for the time and they can give you an exact answer, thanks to our planet’s intricate timekeeping system, built with atomic clocks, GPS satellites and high-speed telecommunications networks. […]

NIST Offers New Calibration Service for Wavemeters | NIST Updates

December 30, 2024 Office

December 23, 2024 For more than three decades, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has calibrated the wavelengths of lasers used in industry, academia, and government laboratories. NIST has now expanded its service […]

To Break New Ground With Frequency Combs, a NIST Innovation Plays With the Beat | NIST

October 24, 2022 Office

An improvement to a Nobel Prize-winning technology called a frequency comb enables it to measure light pulse arrival times with greater sensitivity than was previously possible — potentially improving measurements of distance along with applications […]

GPS Receiver Calibration: Why Is It Necessary

July 25, 2022 Office

by Nadya Goldovsky Measurement uncertainty for a GPS receiver depends on the receiver’s design and on the measurement method used. The majority of clients’ GPS receivers operate with C/A code and use the one-way method […]

JILA Atomic Clocks Measure Einstein’s General Relativity at Millimeter Scale | NIST News

February 16, 2022 Office

JILA physicists have measured Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity, or more specifically, the effect called time dilation, at the smallest scale ever, showing that two tiny atomic clocks, separated by just a millimeter or […]

NIST Team Compares 3 Top Atomic Clocks With Record Accuracy Over Both Fiber and Air | NIST

March 24, 2021 Office

In a significant advance toward the future redefinition of the international unit of time, the second, a research team led by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has compared three of the world’s […]

An Introduction to Frequency Calibration, Part II

October 22, 2020 Office

by Michael Lombardi Volume 3:2, Mar-Apr 1996 This article is part II of a two-part series on frequency calibrations. Part I introduced the topic of frequency calibrations, discussed the specifications involved, and described several types […]

An Introduction to Frequency Calibration, Part 1

October 22, 2020 Office

by Michael Lombardi Volume 3:1, Jan-Feb 1996 This article is part I of a two-part series on frequency calibrations. Part I introduces the topic of frequency calibrations, discusses the specifications involved, and describes the different […]