Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have built an enhanced version of an experimental atomic clock based on a single aluminum atom that is now the world’s most precise clock, more than twice as precise as the previous pacesetter based on a mercury atom.
The new aluminum clock would neither gain nor lose one second in about 3.7 billion years, according to measurements to be reported in Physical Review Letters.
The new clock is the second version of NIST’s “quantum logic clock,” so called because it borrows the logical processing used for atoms storing data in experimental quantum computing, another major focus of the same NIST research group. The second version of the logic clock offers more than twice the precision of the original.
“This paper is a milestone for atomic clocks” for a number of reasons, says NIST postdoctoral researcher James Chou, who developed most of the improvements.
In addition to demonstrating that aluminum is now a better timekeeper than mercury, the latest results confirm that optical clocks are widening their lead—in some respects—over the NIST-F1 cesium fountain clock, the U.S. civilian time standard, which currently keeps time to within 1 second in about 100 million years.
They’ll never let it be marketed…no built in obsolescence
Pretty amazing but is there any need for a clock with anywhere near that level of accuracy?
‘demonstrating that aluminum is now a better timekeeper than mercury’… who decided one and three-quarter billion years just wasn’t accurate enough..?!
See, how do we know it was be accurate for that long? Its not like anyone could ever prove them wrong, they could just be making it all up. Don’t believe everything you hear!!
*puts on tin foil hat*
It might be accurate now but it will be an hour out by the Spring time! lol
“This paper is a milestone for atomic clocks” struck me as immensely humourous for some reason. Why do the clocks care?
Also, I know it’s terribly serious and important but I can’t bring myself to care. And if it DID lose a second who could tell? Someone with another clock just like it?
Also is the Cesium fountain functional or for decoration? I’m imagining something like a water clock but with Cesium – am I right?
Now I feel shallow, inconsequential and, above all, transient.
So pysicists have spent a lot of TIME building a TIME keeping device, that will not lose or gain TIME in about 3.7 billion years TIME. So even when the Human race is long gone TIME goes on.
TIME to go and waste some TIME!
I never understood why people are so obsessed with time…. we have clocks that will keep perfect time long after humans have gone extinct, and watches that cost more than the average house. Surely that’s good enough?
Wow, where can I buy one?
This clock is accurate as compared to what? We don’t actually know when the great “universal” (as if there could really be such a thing). It might be accurate for us, but even then we’ve started the stop watch a long way into the existence of the universe. There’s no saying that we’ve started counting at a precise moment, or that there is a pan-universal thing where those moment’s are consistent throughout the universe and all of its anomalies. We should probably start to better understand what it is we’re measuring before we develop an incredibly accurate device to measure it.
Well, I think the big question is… Whose time is it being measured against? Unless it has been built to somehow ignore the laws of space-time, the time will only be accurate for its own experience for the measurements.
Throw it into orbit for a few decades, and I am pretty sure that either it will be wrong.
Btw I totally need that clock.
To hold the whole world hostage.
Rofl nobody would know what to do.
>.>
Erm…..wow?
LC x
Time doesn’t exist anyway. It’s just something we believe in. Or is it not?
If you don’t wear a watch time appears to go faster.
The perception of time is an illusion: time itself is not. It is a process, a causal relationship between then and now. Events (such as the decay of certain atoms) occur at a constant rate and therefore punctuate and ‘measure’ the causal chain of processes. A new way of measuring has given us a finer degree of accuracy.
If the underlying fabric of space and time changed, the measurements would change accordingly, and therefore would still be relatively accurate. It would have to be a localised change to create a difference great enough to make the readings inaccurate. (Gravity waves – still not been detected)
Does it matter? It really does. The satellites above us need to be regularly recalibrated to acount for relativity. As computers get faster, they will need to be finely coordinated. Physicists are not stupid – amoral but not stupid.
The perception of time is an illusion: time itself is not. It is a process, a causal relationship between then and now. Events (such as the decay of certain atoms) occur at a constant rate and therefore punctuate and ‘measure’ the causal chain of processes. A new way of measuring has given us a finer degree of accuracy.
If the underlying fabric of space and time changed, the measurements would change accordingly, and therefore would still be accurate. It would have to be a localised change to create a difference great enough to make the readings inaccurate. (Gravity waves – still not been detected)
Does it matter? It really does. The satellites above us need to be regularly recalibrated to acount for relativity. As computers get faster, they will need to be finely coordinated. Physicists are not stupid – amoral maybe, but not stupid.
Timing the lasers in the fusion generators of the future? Powerful clocks may be more useful than you think…