Posted on 05/05/2015 7:10:27 AM PDT by C19fan
Scientists have succeeded in making a clock so precise it could tick for 15 billion years longer than the age of the Universe without gaining or losing a second. The new research, described in Nature Communications in April, sets a world record for timekeeping and is a three-fold improvement over the previous record, set by the same clock in Boulder, Colorado, last year.
On a practical level, the optical lattice atomic clock Jun Ye and his colleagues at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology are developing could replace the caesium atomic clocks used in GPS systems, internet communications and other technologies that rely on accurate time keeping.
(Excerpt) Read more at cosmosmagazine.com ...
Yea, but what clock do you use to set it?
The one on the microwave.
Yeah - first thought that came to me as well.
By what standard is this measured?
But, that’s my worldview training/study coming to the fore.
The one that clocked matter travelling faster than the speed of light!
and what happens to it when it gets unplugged. Do they have a power source that will work for 15 B billion years?
SO cool.
Not a Timex, I would guess.
Finally, an egg-timer that actually works!
You mean the one still blinking "12:00"???
Right.
It’s always exactly right twice a day.
I clicked on this reading, “Glock,” in the headline.
Never mind....
It’s a really well written article.
Yet when it is transported anywhere it is no longer reading the same time as where it previously was....ah, relativity
Does anyone really know what time it is?
Does anybody really care?
A great insight, intended or not.
I do note they wrote "precise," not accurate. What do clocks keep track of?
The length of an earth day. Which, as I understand, has been changing since it was first created...
LOL! Those aren’t pillows!
More of our useless tax dollars at work. : (
Case in point, when the Indonesian 9.0 earthquake happened it introduced a wobble to the Earths rotation. Probably one of many “time shifts” that have occurred.
The one true character of a clock that matters is stability of measurement. This is a property than can be calculated based on the design of the instrument itself. As far as moving the instrument goes in changing the measurement, the more accurate the clock the more precise all measurements become when all factors are included in the equation. The clock itself is always moving anyway due to the space it occupies having plural vectors of movement.
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