Time Is Money: SIM Time Network Has Far-Reaching Benefits For
Immediate Release: May 25, 2010 Contact: James Burrus Clocks in
the Americas and the Caribbean Islands are now ticking in unison
thanks to the work of the Sistema Interamericano de Metrologia
(SIM), a regional metrology organization that works to promote
accurate measurements throughout the Americas. Since 2005, SIM
has been building a time network, designed by the U.S. National
Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), that now extends
to 16 nations. The SIM Time Network allows each of these nations
to continuously compare their clocks, with the time differences
between the nations displayed on a SIM Web site. These time
differences generally are very small, often less than 100
nanoseconds (100 billionths of a second). It has been said that
the world’s most commonly asked question is “What time is it?”
Nations that maintain accurate time standards benefit all of
their residents. Accurate time and synchronization are crucial
for much or our mod