If you follow scientific developments as
if they were football games, this would be a good time to cheer
"Tick-tick-tick-tick! Tick-tick-tick-tick! Go, clock, go!"
The reason for such
enthusiasm? Researchers have released a study in the journal Science
describing what they believe is the world's most precise clock.
You'd never need this
level of precision for getting to work on time, but the clock could be
used for scientific exploration and technological advancements in areas
such as navigation systems, said study co-author Andrew Ludlow,
researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in
Boulder, Colorado.
The rate of ticking of
this timepiece -- known informally (and awkwardly) as the ytterbium
optical lattice clock -- does not change by more than one part in
10^18, Ludlow said. In other words, if there is any variation in how a
second is measured, it would be in about the 18th decimal place.
"The ytterbium optical
lattice clock has demonstrated a groundbreaking, new level of clock
stability," he said. "One could say that this is like measuring time
over a hundred years to a precision of several nanoseconds."
In order to understand what's so special about this table-sized clock, it helps to have a little background:
How clocks work
Inside a clock is a
mechanism that changes in some regular way, called an oscillator.
Imagine, for example, a grandfather clock, whose pendulum swings back
and forth denoting time. In a wrist watch there is often a crystal with
an electrically oscillating signal.