In the United States, official time was moved by almost five microseconds due to a power outage at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) laboratory in Colorado, NPR reported, citing the agency's statement.
The incident occurred after a powerful storm knocked out power to the NIST complex in Boulder, where the US National Time Standard is calculated. First, the backup generator failed, causing a brief interruption in the atomic clock's data transmission system.
"As a result, US Coordinated Time (NIST UTC) is 4.8 microseconds slower than normal," NIST spokeswoman Rebecca Jacobson said.
We are talking about fractions of a second. A microsecond is a millionth of a second. By comparison, Jacobson says, it takes a human about 350,000 microseconds to blink.
