A New Atomic Clock has been Built that Would be off by Less than a Second Since the Big Bang

By Evan Gough December 1, 2018
A New Atomic Clock has been Built that Would be off by Less than a Second Since the Big Bang

The "Royal Flush" of Clock Performance

  • Systematic uncertainty: This is how well the clock represents the natural vibrations of the ytterbium atoms. The ytterbium clock was off by only one billionth of one billionth.

  • Stability: This is how much the frequency of the clock changes in a specified time. In this case, they measured their ytterbium clock and it changed by only 0.00000000000000000032) over a day.

  • Reproducibility: This measures how closely two ytterbium clocks tick at the same frequency. In 10 comparisons between the pair of clocks, the difference was again less than one billionth of a billionth.

    • Clocks, Gravity, and Relativity

    A Portable, Game-Changing Atomic Clock

    Goodbye Caesium, Hello Ytterbium

    Sources:

  • Press Release: NIST Atomic Clocks Now Keep Time Well Enough to Improve Models of Earth

  • Research Paper: Atomic clock performance beyond the geodetic limit

  • MIT News: Atomic timekeeping, on the go

  • Wikipedia: Atomic clock

  • Wikipedia: Caesium standard

  • Wikipedia: Atomic electron transition

    • Evan Gough

    Evan Gough

    Evan Gough is a science-loving guy with no formal education who loves Earth, forests, hiking, and heavy music. He's guided by Carl Sagan's quote: "Understanding is a kind of ecstasy."