Slashdot Mirror
Keeping Time with a Mercury Atom
Roland Piquepaille writes "The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has announced that a new experimental atomic clock based on a single mercury atom is now at least five times more precise than NIST-F1, the U.S. standard clock. This mercury atomic clock 'would neither gain nor lose a second in about 400 million years' while it would take 'only' 70 million years to NIST-F1, based on a 'fountain' of cesium atoms, to gain or lose a second. But even if this new kind of optical atomic clock is more accurate than cesium microwave clocks, it will take a while before such a design can be accepted as an international standard. A ZDNet summary contains pictures and more details about the world's most precise clock."
or should I even care how many MILLIONS of years it takes a clock to get thrown off by an entire second?
70 million years is more than enough time for me... Sounds like somebody needs more grant money to me!
Remember, adding a random "do:loop" into someone else's code is a damn good time!
Bogart: Thugtor, why make rocks pointy? Waste too much time. Rocks already makes things dead good 'nuff.
Thugtor spears Bogart.