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    Short WaveThe Great Space Race ... With Clocks
    14 minEpisode 1279

    The Great Space Race ... With Clocks

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    It's Memorial Day, Short Wavers. This holiday, we bring you a meditation on time ... and clocks. There are hundreds of atomic clocks in orbit right now, perched on satellites all over Earth. We depend on them for GPS location, Internet timing, stock trading and even space navigation. In today's encore episode, hosts Emily Kwong and Regina G. Barber learn how to build a better clock. In order to do that, they ask: How do atomic clocks really work, anyway? What makes a clock precise?

    - For more about Holly's Optical Atomic Strontium Ion Clock, check out the OASIC project on NASA's website.

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    © NPRLength 14 min26 May 2025Episode 1279ScienceFactsEducationalUSAEpisodic

    Introducing Short Wave

    Introducing Short Wave

    This is an episodic podcast, so you can listen to it in any order, but episode one is a great place to start.

    Listen to episode one here
    11+ScienceFactsEducationalUSAEpisodic26 May 2025© NPR

    It's Memorial Day, Short Wavers. This holiday, we bring you a meditation on time ... and clocks. There are hundreds of atomic clocks in orbit right now, perched on satellites all over Earth. We depend on them for GPS location, Internet timing, stock trading and even space navigation. In today's encore episode, hosts Emily Kwong and Regina G. Barber learn how to build a better clock. In order to do that, they ask: How do atomic clocks really work, anyway? What makes a clock precise? And how could that process be improved for even greater accuracy?

    - For more about Holly's Optical Atomic Strontium Ion Clock, check out the OASIC project on NASA's website.

    - For more about the Longitude Problem, check out Dava Sobel's book, Longitude.

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