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Record Breaking Clock Accurate to one Second in 15 Billion Years

posted by martyb on Wednesday April 22 2015, @08:47PM   
from the let-the-good-times-roll dept.

AnonTechie writes:

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

• If this is the most accurate clock If this is the most accurate clock (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 23 2015, @02:14PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 23 2015, @02:14PM (#174304)

  How do they know the real time? Averages? Pixie dust?

• Re:If this is the most accurate clock (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 23 2015, @06:21PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 23 2015, @06:21PM (#174383)

  Indeed; how do they actually know how accurate it is, if there is no way to compare it something more accurate?

  Other than that, I'd think at some point (which we have probably passed quite a few years ago), clocks would be "sufficiently accurate for all practical purposes". What's the point? What would this new clock enable us to do which was previously not possible?

  Parent