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Physicists have said they have fine-tuned an atomic clock to the point where it won’t lose or gain a second in 15bn years – longer than the universe has existed.
The “optical lattice” clock ( http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/150421/ncomms7896/full/ncomms7896.html ), which uses strontium atoms, is now three times more accurate than a year ago when it set the previous world record, its developers reported in the journal Nature Communications.
The advance brings science a step closer to replacing the current gold standard in timekeeping: the caesium fountain clock that is used to set Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the official world time.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/apr/22/record-breaking-clock-invented-which-only-loses-a-second-in-15-billion-years
[Also Covered By]: http://www.theverge.com/2015/4/22/8466681/most-accurate-atomic-clock-optical-lattice-strontium
(Score: 2) by Mr Big in the Pants on Wednesday April 22 2015, @09:27PM
That is the least controversial part. At least you could measure and extrapolate and come up with a some sort of estimate.
The controversial part is them claiming to know the universe is less than 15 billion years old!?
How on earth do they know that?
Research in the area isn't even toilet trained yet...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 23 2015, @01:21PM
They looked at its birth certificate. Duh.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 23 2015, @07:23PM
If you want to know how they know, then why don't you study it. But I guess the current age of the universe is derived from their best models that actually fit the observed data. There is certainly room for it to be refined further (i.e. date it more precisely with smaller error bars), but doesn't seem likely it will have to be revised significantly, although I wouldn't rule that out until we really know what dark matter and dark energy actually are.
(Score: 2) by Mr Big in the Pants on Tuesday April 28 2015, @04:44AM
You should also.
The science is sooooo in its infancy compared to the other branches which was entirely my point.
Saying pretty much ANYTHING in this field is like predicting the stock market...