U.S. scientists claim to have built world's most accurate clock

14:18, 25 August 2013

BEIJING, August 25. KAZINFORM U.S. scientists have built the world's most precise clock, whose ticking rate varies less than two parts in one quintillion, or 10 times better than any other, according to National Institute of Standards and Technology physicist Andrew Ludlow.

The clock, made from the element ytterbium, could be used for technological advancements beyond timekeeping, such as 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," Andrew Ludlow said in a statement.

However, some other said, although scientists have proclaimed that this is the world's most stable clock, they do not yet know as much about its accuracy.

While mechanical clocks use the movement of a pendulum to keep time, atomic clocks use an electromagnetic signal of light emitted at an exact frequency to move electrons in caesium atoms.

According to UK Telegraph, the physicists built the ytterbium clocks using about 10,000 rare-earth atoms cooled to 10 microkelvin (10 millionths of a degree above absolute zero) and trapped in an optical lattice made of laser light.

Source: XINHUA

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