The world's most precise clock

[n2doc]

The ion trap where the main action takes place in the NIST aluminum ion clock. The aluminum ion and partner magnesium ion sit in the slit running down the center of the device between the electrodes. Credit: J. Koelemeij/NIST

Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have built an enhanced version of an experimental atomic clock based on a single aluminum atom that is now the world’s most precise clock, more than twice as precise as the previous pacesetter based on a mercury atom.
The new aluminum clock would neither gain nor lose one second in about 3.7 billion years, according to measurements to be reported in Physical Review Letters.*

The new clock is the second version of NIST’s “quantum logic clock,” so called because it borrows the logical processing used for atoms storing data in experimental quantum computing, another major focus of the same NIST research group. (The logic process is described at http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/logic_clock/logic_clock.html#background.) The second version of the logic clock offers more than twice the precision of the original.

more:
http://www.rdmag.com/News/2010/02/General-Science-Physics-The-Worlds-Most-Precise-Clock/

[dipsydoodle]

1. Better than this one then

From 1957 The Goon Show - What Time Is It Eccles? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSSGiA4f5cs

[RKP5637]

2. Interesting! n/t

[Joe Chi Minh]

3. I wonder if there's a Swatch version.