Most people adjust their watches and clocks according to the time displayed on their cell phone. But now you have a new guideline: the NIST-F2 atomic clock. 
 
 Built by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the next-gen device will serve as the U.S. civilian time and frequency standard. 
 
 The most accurate clock in the world, the F2 could run continuously for 300 million years and never stray from the perfect time for even one second. By nearly eliminating small errors caused by background radiation, researchers have have made this clock three times more accurate than the current NIST-F1the standard since 1999. 
 
 For now, NIST will run the F1 and F2 clocks simultaneously for comparison's sake. Both machines use a "fountain" of cesium atoms to determine the exact length of a second; they are just the latest in a long line of cesium-based atomic clocks developed by NIST since the 1950s. 
 
 As the institute pointed out, everyday technologies like cell phones, GPS satellite receivers, and the electric power grid rely on high-accuracy atomic clocks, which help move innovation into the future. 
 
 "If we've learned anything in the last 60 years of building atomic clocks, we've learned that every time we build a better clock, somebody comes up with a use for it that you couldn't have foreseen," NIST physicist and F2 lead designer Steven Jefferts said in a statement. 
 
 NIST carries a heavy weight, providing timing and synchronization measurement services for a number of users, including to time-stamp hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. financial transactions. NIST time is also circulated via the Internet Time Service, which receives 8 billion requests per day to sync clocks in computers and network devices. 
 
 "When you can do something better than the earth gives you naturally with its rotation, then you go ahead and start down that road," Jefferts said of his work on the atomic clock. 
 
 But the U.S. can't expect to keep the ridiculously accurate machine all for itself. A second version of NIST-F2, dubbed IT-CsF2, will be operated by the Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica (INRIM), NIST's counterpart in Turin, Italy. 
 
 Check out the science behind the F2 in NIST's video below. 

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 Video courtesy of NIST. 
 
 With a new and improved atomic clock, the standard of time in America is about to change -- a teeny, tiny bit. 
 
 For the first time in 15 years, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, is adding a new official atomic clock, institute officials announced Wednesday -- at 10:02 a.m. PDT precisely. 
 
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 Since 1999 the civilian time and frequency standard in the United States has been NIST-F1, a clock that measures the number of oscillations in a cesium atom's resonant frequency. 
 
 Throughout the world, a second is defined as exactly 9,192,631,770 oscillations or cycles of a cesium atom. The more accurately a clock can determine these oscillations, the more accurate the clock. 
 
 And the new clock, NIST-F2, is three times more accurate than its predecessor. 
 
 "If you could run either of these clocks for 100 million years, NIST-F1 would lose one second, NIST-F2 would lose 1/3 of a second," said Steven Jefferts, lead designer of the NIST-F2. 
 
 This substantial, but subtle, improvement in national timekeeping won't affect anyone's life tomorrow, said Jefferts, but it could lead to new technologies down the road. 
 
 For example, telecommunications and the electric power grid rely on clocks that can keep time to one-millionth of a second a day, said Tom O'Brian, chief of the NIST time and frequency division. He added that GPS synchronization depends on clocks that keep time to one-billionth of a second a day. 
 
 "These technologies keep getting adopted for use in our society, so we have to keep inventing things and making them better," said Jefferts. 
 
 Both NIST-F1 and NIST-F2 are what are known as fountain clocks. To accurately measure the length of a second, they start by tossing a ball of 10 million cesium atoms into the air, hitting it with microwaves, and then letting it fall down through a tube where it gets hit by microwaves again. These microwaves change the state of some of the atoms in the ball. 
 
 Toward the end of the cesium atom ball's journey, it gets hit by another laser, which allows researchers to see how many of the atoms in the ball are in the new state. This whole cycle happens thousands of times an hour until a microwave frequency is found that changes the most cesium atoms into a new state. That frequency is the natural frequency of the cesium atom, or the frequency used to define a second. 
 
 (Confused? The video at the top might help.) 
 
 The key advantage NIST-F2 has over NIST-F1 is a vertical flight tube that is chilled to minus- 316 degrees Fahrenheit. In NIST-F1 this tube operates at about room temperature. The cooler tube dramatically reduces background radiation, the researchers said, which in turn reduces the very small measurement errors in NIST-F1. 
 
 As exciting as this advance may seem, it is just the tip of the timekeeping iceberg. A revolution in timekeeping is afoot, with labs around the world racing to find ever more accurate ways of measuring the length of a second using different atoms in different frameworks. 
 
 "Even as we celebrate the most accurate cesium clock in the world, we have research atomic clocks that are more precise," said O'Brian. 
 
 Jefferts suggested even bigger changes may soon be afoot: "Not so far in the future we are going to end up redefining the second," he said. 
 
 Time, the universe and everything! It's all so fascinating! Follow me on Twitter and let's learn more about science together. 
 
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– The official US timekeepers are upgrading their systems. Since 1999, the National Institute of Standards and Technology has determined the time based on an atomic clock known as NIST-F1. Now there's a new and improved version of the clock—and it's "the most accurate clock of its kind in the world," the institute says. NIST-F2 boasts three times the accuracy of F1. "If you could run either of these clocks for 100 million years, NIST-F1 would lose one second; NIST-F2 would lose 1/3 of a second," says F2's lead designer. One second is defined worldwide in terms of oscillations of a cesium atom (9,192,631,770 of those oscillations, to be precise). Both clocks determine the time by tossing 10 million such atoms into the air and using lasers to analyze them, the Los Angeles Times explains. What's better about the new clock is that it uses chilled conditions to fight background radiation, thus improving its assessment. Why be so careful? Everything from cell phones to GPS use atomic clock measurements, researchers say, per PC Magazine. "If we've learned anything in the last 60 years of building atomic clocks, we've learned that every time we build a better clock, somebody comes up with a use for it that you couldn't have foreseen," says the designer.