Timing and reference since 2016
Project Polaris
An agreed answer to what time it is, when nothing else agrees.
Distributed time and frequency reference for sites that may go months without external synchronisation. Polaris exists because a surprising share of our historical data quality incidents reduced, eventually, to two instruments disagreeing about when something happened.
Purpose
Provide an agreed answer to what time it is when external references disagree or vanish.
Architecture
- Holdover measured in months, not hours
- Disagreement surfaced rather than averaged away
- Signed time attestations on observations
- Independent of any single external reference
Design constraints
- Must not hide dissent between clocks
- Must survive seasonal isolation
Failure modes
- Holdover that looks healthy while wrong (Experiment Delta)
- Cultural trust in a single 'primary' clock
Historical development
Motivated by ARGENT 1993 and Observation 7A's stubborn period. Programme formalised 2016.
Known limitations
- Does not explain 1,270 s
- Cannot retrofit honesty into past unattested data
We do not claim systems are perfect. We document how they fail.