A record-breaking clock could hold perfect timing for a period "comparable to the age of the universe."
The ytterbium (a lanthanide and rare earth metal) atomic clock has been named the most precise in the world, it has a stability 10 times greater than the last record holder, a National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) press release reported.
"The stability of the ytterbium lattice clocks opens the door to a number of exciting practical applications of high-performance timekeeping," NIST physicist and co-author Andrew Ludlow says.
The clocks rely on "10,000 rare-earth atoms cooled to 10 microkelvin (10 millionths of a degree above absolute zero) and trapped in an optical lattice-a series of pancake-shaped wells made of laser light," according to the press release.
A second laser "ticks 518 trillion times per second," it is responsible for the transition between atomic energy levels.
Most clocks of this vein need to be "averaged" for about five days in order to display the most accurate information. This atomic invention only needs a second to achieve the same results and accuracy.
"If you were to run this clock for around 100 million years, it would only gain or lose about a second," Ludlow says. These clocks are accurate because we've identified their sources of error and eliminated most of them, so physicists can be confident that its ticking is true," Ludlow told New Scientist.
Scientists have been working on the original clock since 2003; recently they developed a second version. Over the course of the project the team has made several improvements: "an ultra-low-noise laser used to excite the atoms," and "a method to cancel disruptive effects caused by collisions between atoms," according to the press release.
The clock may be used to test Einstein's famous theory of general relativity, New Scientist reported.
The theory suggests a clock's speed is related to gravity. So a clock on the ground would run slower than one at the top of Mt. Everest.This clock would be able to make the most accurate ruling on the theory's validity.
