Scientists have a set a new record in accurate timekeeping, creating an atomic clock that won't lose or gain a second in 15 billion years — a time span greater than the estimated age of the Universe. The clock measures the oscillation of strontium atoms to create its "tick," and could one day become the standard for the world's official time — Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Currently, UTC is set using atomic clocks that measure the vibrational frequency of the element caesium, although these are only accurate in the region of one second in hundreds of millions of years.
The strontium clock, developed by physicists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado Boulder, measures the...
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