Scientists at
the National Institute of Standards and Technology have claimed that the
ultra-stable ytterbium lattice atomic clock is the world’s most precise clock.
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| Image: Telegraph |
The U.S.
scientists claim that the clock boasts a ticking rate that varies less than two
parts in one quintillion, 10 times better than the current most accurate ones.
Instead of
the pendulum that is employed in the traditional mechanical clocks, the atomic
clocks use an electromagnetic signal of light emitted at an exact frequency to
move electrons in caesium atoms.
10,000 rare
atoms cooled to 10 microkelvin and trapped in an optical lattice made of laser
light was used to make the ytterbium clocks.
Another laser
reportedly ticks 518 trillion times per second to trigger a transition between
two energy levels in the atoms. The clock’s stability has been credited to the
large number of atoms.
It has been
claimed that ytterbium clocks can achieve its best performance every second
compared to the NIST-F1 caesium fountain clock that average 400,000 seconds (about
five days) to achieve its best performance.
The physicists
have claimed that the element, ytterbium could be useful for other technologies
apart from keeping time. They claim it could be useful in navigation systems,
magnetic fields and temperature.
“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 of the study revealing the clock, Andrew Ludlow said
in a statement.
The study was
published in the journal Science.
Source: Telegraph
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Scientists claim to have made the world’s most accurate clock