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An episode of the BBC World Service program "CrowdScience". A couple of 
inaccuracies/exaggerations but worth a listen.

"It sounds like a simple question -- what is the time? But look closer and you 
realise time is a slippery concept that scientists still do not fully 
understand. Even though we now have atomic clocks that can keep time to one 
second in 15 billion years, this astonishing level of accuracy may not be 
enough. The complexity of computer-controlled systems, such as high-frequency 
financial trading or self-driving cars which rely on the pinpoint accuracy of 
GPS, could in future require clocks that are even more accurate to ensure 
everything runs 'on time'.

"But what does that even mean? As Anand Jagatia discovers, time is a very strange 
thing. He visits the origins of modern time-keeping at the Royal Observatory 
in Greenwich and meets scientists at the National Physical Laboratory who 
have been counting and labelling every second since the 1950s. He meets 
Demetrios Matsakis, the man who defined time and visits the real-life 'Time 
Lords', at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM) in Paris 
to find out how they co-ordinate the world's time and why the leap second is 'dangerous'."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04q778b

-- Richard Langley

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| Richard B. Langley                            E-mail: lang@unb.ca         |
| Geodetic Research Laboratory                  Web: http://gge.unb.ca      |
| Dept. of Geodesy and Geomatics Engineering    Phone:    +1 506 453-5142   |
| University of New Brunswick                   Fax:      +1 506 453-4943   |
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