[time-nuts] Question for the cesium nuts.

[Normand Martel]

Perhaps the future of timing is the newly developed
(and not yet commercialized) Mercury ion frequency
standard.

Also, some high end rubidium (such as Perkin-Elmer)
manufacturers are able to develope 133Rb clocks having
> 450 000 hours MTBF! That'a a lot of nanoseconds!

73 de Normand VE2UM
--- Jack Hudler <jack at hudler.org> wrote:

> It seems to me that like all good things they must
> come to and end.
> 
> If all CBTs have a life expectancy that varies
> depending on the
> manufacturer.
> 
> What are we going to do when all the CBTs owned by
> amateurs start to end of
> life?
> 
> I for one am certainly not going to buy one, not at
> those prices! (Unless
> I'm retired then that's another story)
> You only have calculate the time value of money for
> that CBT purchase over
> the remaining time to retirement; If that doesn't
> stop you dead in your
> tracks then this group really is aptly named! :)
> 
> From my perspective, that of wanting to own a Cesium
> Standard; I don't
> really want to layout the monies for something
> that's going to end of life
> on me shortly (few years) afterwards.
> 
> I know that handling (Caesium) Cesium-133 is tricky
> at best. It's a heavy
> alkali metal and contact with moisture is right out!
> 
> Other than that it's not terribly difficult to
> create a safe environment to
> work with it.
> 
> So there must be something else that's considerably
> more difficult than
> opening the tube, recharging the ampoule, resealing
> it, pulling an ultra
> high vacuum and baking it out.
> 
> I've not seen any pictures of a naked CBT, still I'm
> not too worried about
> cracking the tube open if its Pyrex, unless
> resealing it caused the cesium
> beam collimation to be lost.
> 
> Are there if any getters to worry about? If so, how
> would one ablate the
> contaminates of the surface?
> 
> Anyone care to start a discussion on the merits of
> restoring a CBT to life?
> 
> Jack
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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