Using two optical clocks deploying lasers to cool and trap ytterbium atoms, researchers at NIST have managed to get them ticking together to an accuracy level 100 times greater than caesium clocks – technically to within 1.4 parts in 10 18. In fact these new clocks could get so precise they would only lose one second every 15 billion years. The next-generation clocks currently in development at NIST are optical atomic clocks, measuring light waves with a resonance frequency some 100,000 times higher than microwave radiation, allowing for much more precision. The key is developing clocks able to see higher-frequency visible light, which means greater precision in measuring time.Īs Edwin Cartlidge reports at Science, metrologists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Boulder Laboratories in Colorado are now working on devices up to 100 times more accurate than existing clocks.Įvery clock marks time based on a certain action, whether it's the swing of a pendulum, or – in the case of modern-day atomic clocks – the oscillations of a microwave beam set at the exact wavelength needed to excite the chemical element caesium.Īs the caesium electrons jump back and forth between two energy states, the frequency of these jumps can be used to measure time. With that in mind, efforts are underway to build clocks that are more accurate than ever at keeping time. That may not be enough to make you late for choir practice, but in the fields of space travel and physics even small errors can make big differences.

Change time on atomic clock