Monday, February 8, 2010

New Record for Clock Accuracy...

This new clock is accurate to within one second in 3.7 billion years, or (equivalently) one nanosecond in 3.7 years.  When I first started working in electronics, we thought a clock that was stable to within one millisecond per day was pretty hot stuff.  This new clock is over a billion times more stable...

1 comment:

  1. I have one of those watches that picks up the signal from the atomic clocks to recalibrate each night. I was thrilled! Finally I can know what the time is exactly. down to the nanosecond. Because frankly, I like to be on time. Then I got to thinking, how long does the signal take to get to my watch? How much off is my watch now? Even recalibrated every night, it will always be off some small amount. Maybe I need a watch to calibrate off GPS satellites so it can pick up multiple signals, know my exact location and so can adjust time signal accordingly. What about relativistic effects from differing relative velocities? Sigh, my new atomic watch is such crap. :( :)

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