Atomic time is based of the natural vibration of the cesium atom. Supposedly they're working on a new one based off of... darn, I forget which material, but it's supposed to be like 4000x more accurate than the cesium-based one because the rate of vibration is much, much faster. Also, they have a laser which scans much faster as well.
I think that's how it works, they shoot a very, very tiny laser at a small grouping of cesium atoms and calculate how often the laser gets through (because the atoms move and let the light through, and then move back and block it or something like that).
But I'm but a simple programmer, what do I know.
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