(ticking clocks)
- You're not supposed to worry about how the clocks got set,
right, they just did get set.
When everything's working properly and I'm doing my job,
you don't know anything about it.
- [Interviewer] Are you wearing a watch?
- Yeah, I don't wear a watch because it's
too compulsive.
- [Interviewer] That's Judah Levine.
- It makes you look at the watch all
the time and you kind of go a little crazy.
- [Interviewer] His nickname is literally
the Nation's Time Lord.
- I mean, that comes from Dr. Who, if you've ever
watched Dr. Who.
I don't remember who made me the Time Lord.
I think it's unfair to all my colleagues.
- [Interviewer] Do you have a Tardis?
- Uh no, I don't have a Tardis.
Only Dr. Who has a Tardis.
- [Interviewer] Okay fair enough, but there's
a reason he got that nickname.
Judah's job is to officially keep time standard.
He works here at the National Institute
of Standards and Technology.
It's a government agency that maintains standards
of all quantities, such as length, speed,
and, well...
Time.
- In the old days, which means like 100 years ago,
time was something that was astronomical.
It was sunrise, or sunset or noon or whatever.
In the more modern era, time is something
defined by a ton of clocks, which provide
a very stable reference frequency.
- [Interviewer] Atomic clocks are the most accurate
way to tell time on earth.
45 years ago, Judah and a team of scientists
at NIST developed a system for the atomic clock
that tracks time more accurately than ever before
in the U.S., linking all phones,
power grids, financial markets, you name it.
Every day he checks to make sure the systems
are calibrated, ensuring that time is right on schedule.
- These are the atomic clocks, this is the real stuff.
- [Interviewer] What if we switched off
the atomic clock.
What if it just stops working?
- Uh, certainly cell phones systems stop
pretty much right away.
The internet stops pretty quickly.
High end tech stuff would suffer very quickly.
- [Interviewer] But that's probably not gonna happen.
- There are 400 atomic clocks in many timing laboratories.
I don't think we're ever going to intentionally
switch off all of the atomic clocks.
That's an unthinkable event.
- [Interviewer] If you say so, Judah.
After, all, you're the only reason we
all know what time it is.