{"id":74845,"date":"2025-07-19T07:50:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T07:50:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/74845\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T07:50:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T07:50:11","slug":"we-have-a-new-record-for-the-most-accurate-clock-ever-built-sciencealert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/74845\/","title":{"rendered":"We Have a New Record For The Most Accurate Clock Ever Built : ScienceAlert"},"content":{"rendered":"

A clock built by a team led by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been estimated to be 41 percent more accurate than the previous timekeeping record holder<\/a>.<\/p>\n

By measuring the tiny vibrations of a trapped aluminum ion cooled to near absolute zero<\/a>, the clock calculates seconds with a precision of 19 decimal places.<\/p>\n

As well as breaking a record for accuracy (known in technical terms as systematic uncertainty), the clock is 2.6 times more stable than any other clock of its type.<\/p>\n

Related: Breakthrough: Scientists Create World’s First Nuclear Clock Prototype<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

“It’s exciting to work on the most accurate clock ever,” says<\/a> physicist Mason Marshall, from NIST.<\/p>\n

“At NIST we get to carry out these long-term plans in precision measurement that can push the field of physics and our understanding of the world around us.”<\/p>\n

The culmination of 20 years of work, the record-breaking clock’s design relies upon an intimate knowledge of quantum physics<\/a>, with every micromotion of the surrounding capable of throwing off the clock’s ticking by minuscule amounts.<\/p>\n

This was achieved by thickening the diamond wafer that made up the clock enclosure and the gold coatings of the electrodes inside, to further stabilize the electrical fields<\/a> driving the necessary ticking of the clock.<\/p>\n

\"AtomicThe newly modified ion trap, with an inset showing the aluminum-magnesium ion pair. (NIST)<\/p>\n

Vital to the clock’s reliability is the pairing of the aluminum with a charged magnesium atom<\/a>; a ‘buddy’ ion that made the aluminum ion easier to control with laser light, giving the researchers the winning combination of accuracy and stability.<\/p>\n

The laser came courtesy a neighboring lab 3.6 kilometers (just over 2 miles) away, with its own reputation for precision and stability.<\/p>\n

Overall, the time required to gather enough data to measure a second<\/a> \u2013 down to 19 decimal places \u2013 was reduced from three weeks to a day and a half.<\/p>\n

\"AtomicThe researchers at work on their atomic clock. (R. Jacobson\/NIST)<\/p>\n

“It’s a big, complex challenge, because every part of the clock’s design affects the clock,” says<\/a> NIST electrical engineer Daniel Rodriguez Castillo.<\/p>\n

These clocks don’t measure time in the same way as a watch, letting you know when it’s time for bed (or time to get up). Instead they act as a reference point for timekeeping for calibrating other clocks, for using in experiments, and for probing the Universe around us. Knowing how long a second lasts<\/a> is a crucial benchmark of physics.<\/p>\n

This benefits all kinds of scientific fields, from searching for dark matter<\/a> to testing Einstein’s theory of relativity<\/a>. What’s more, the researchers think there’s more to come \u2013 and that greater accuracy can be achieved through these atomic clocks by further improving system stability and ion control.<\/p>\n

“With this platform, we’re poised to explore new clock architectures \u2013 like scaling up the number of clock ions and even entangling them \u2013 further improving our measurement capabilities,” says<\/a> physicist Willa Arthur-Dworschack, from NIST.<\/p>\n

The research has been published in Physical Review Letters<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A clock built by a team led by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":74846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[352,159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-74845","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-msft-content","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114878809755968426","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}