On Time The caesium ticks its allegro, jewels spin a frictionless dance and the beat of radio waves informs the world. Time is amazingly public and disappointingly inaccurate, much of it spent trying to remove just a few more blurred nanoseconds. A station platform. A train time: 9.43. A clock: 9.44. No train. But it's "on time". That's a relief! Hate to think the caesium was wasted.