SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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 Runaway1956 on Wednesday April 22 2015, @08:52PM
Wake me up when it's been tested and PROVEN! Or, I can just read the news when I get to the restaurant at the end of the universe.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by frojack on Wednesday April 22 2015, @09:14PM
The damn thing won't last that long, so how could it be accurate at that scale?
Was going to suggest that maybe we should get these Physicists to move on to some more immediate problems. Seems like they have let the perfect become the enemy of the good.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 23 2015, @07:07PM
Because what they actually have is a clock with an overall systematic uncertainty of 2.1x10^-18, which you'd know if you'd actually bothered to RTFA. The mainstream press is just translating it to something most people can more easily comprehend.
I doubt this will be useful for timekeeping, we don't really need more accurate as we have to adjust our current ones with leap seconds every so often because of changes in the Earth's rotation. But that doesn't mean there won't be other uses for it.
(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...