Talk:Clock drift

message: I'd like to see some actual data regarding the speed in which the various cessium clocks placed around the globe have been in motion. The argument that "the atomic clocks drift, and they're in motion because they're on earth. Ergo it's the cause is realitivistic time dialation" is simply not enough for me. I want to see a citation of actual test data and how it all coincides with the math behind realitivity. I'm tempted to remove the realitivity section, but I respect Einstein's theories enough to give them the benefit of the doubt. But it pains me to see the cause of physics anamolies being "a wizard did it" and Einsteins theories being cited as "the wizard who did it" without any testing of any sort. I almost feel like the realitivity section amounts to someone with frazzled hair dressed up in a lab coat and welding goggles, pointing dramatically at cessium clocks and shouting "SCIENCE!" with that being all the justification the section needs. 24.254.163.150 (talk) 07:59, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: From International Atomic Time: "In the 1970s, it became clear that the clocks participating in TAI were ticking at different rates due to gravitational time dilation ... this meant that TAI slowed down, by about 10-12. The former uncorrected time scale continues to be published, under the name EAL." Plugging the Earth numbers in to the non-rotating sphere equation in gravitational_time_dilation gives (as a difference from 1) -3.478e-10 at the equator and -3.490e-10 at the poles. There are going to be other factors from e.g. the earth not being a sphere, and the earth spinning (plugging those numbers in gives -1.197e-12 at the equator). Sure, the section needs improvement, but anyone can do a little WP research and fix it. ⇌Elektron 15:15, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Atomic clock drift due to realitivity 

message: I suggest merging the section hardware_random_number_generator#Clock_drift into the section clock_drift#Random_number_generators.
Both are talking about the same thing, a hardware random number generator based on two or more independent oscillators.
I suspect that afterward the merge, we might find we have enough material to split out that section into its own article.
What do you think about merging?
If we make a new article from that material, what should we call it?
"clock drift random number generator" ?
"oscillator driven random number generator" ?
--68.0.124.33 (talk) 20:23, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It belongs in the other article. Someone reading about clock drift does not want to read a few paragraphs about RNG techniques. Besides which, this article presents a terrible random number source – oscillator-derived sources rely on being perturbed by random sources. Clock skew/drift between two crystals is largely systematic, measurable, and not very random. ⇌Elektron 15:36, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Admittedly I know almost nothing about this kind of thing, but it seems that if there are people using clock drift/skew in (pseudo)random number generators such as stated in the section on clock drift in  Hardware random number generatorit should at least be mentioned in that article. Colincbn (talk) 12:08, 13 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  merge 

message: Most reliable sources (e.g. ) seem to use "skew" to mean rate of change of offset (i.e. how fast/slow it runs" and "drift" to mean rate of change of skew (i.e. how stable a clock is). It's a pity that this article uses both terms to mean a range of things, and irritating that "clock skew" is used by the semiconductor industry to mean something else. In any case, this article requires cleanup. ⇌Elektron 15:57, 21 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Drift vs. skew?