UTC – Coordinated Universal Time

UTC (Coordinated Universal Time Code)

UTC Time is a complex time specification, & this article is meant to provide a brief & easy to digest overview. A more detailed article can be found here. GMT used mechanical clocks to attempt to measure the earths solar orbit. But immediately after atomic time was developed in 1955, the old clock- based GMT specification was almost immediately ignored by the scientific world. In the 1960s we probably couldn’t have developed a mechanical clock much further, & then the problem of replicating that time around the world became more difficult as more accuracy was required.

Atomic vibration is perfect in frequency, & once we had developed the technology to measure that frequency in 1955, applying it to derive our natural time clock was mere mathematics.  Thus, UTC time is totally different to GMT time. The atomic vibration of cesium will be theoretically the same in any part of the universe, except for high gravitational fields, meaning that UTC is truly a galactic time.

Much of the world has persisted in referring to time zones by GMT, not realizing that this is technically wrong. In 1972, the official global time specification was announced as UTC, yet writers, watchmakers, computer developers & meteorologists persisted to refer to time zones by their GMT offsets. Even computer operating systems referred to time zones by GMT offset right up until 2012. But it now seems that the message is getting through, that we are using atomic time, and that GMT is clearly NOT atomic time.

The UTC time specification is not likely to ever change in itself. The UTC time specification supplies the required calculations & adjustments required to derive a domestic time for us that keeps in perfect sync with the natural cycles of the solar system. The only foreseeable change to UTC could be a change in the element that we use to measure atomic vibration, for which only minor mathematical changes would be needed for the UTC specification.