World's most accurate clock took 16 billion years to produce a one-second error

It is reported that in 2015, a team of researchers from the University of Tokyo in Japan, in collaboration with the RIKEN Institute of Science and Chemistry in Japan, developed an optical lattice clock with such a high degree of accuracy that it took 16 billion years to produce a one-second error. This is the world's highest accuracy ever confirmed in experiments, and is therefore known as the world's most accurate clock.

Unlike the previous impression of clocks, optical lattice clocks are atomic clocks, and countries around the world are vigorously researching atomic clocks. The so-called atomic clocks are clocks that use the vibration of electrons in atoms as an oscillator. If the vibration frequency is in the optical band, then the clock is called an optical clock, and the world's most accurate clock, the optical lattice clock, is a type of optical clock.

Errors always exist.

At present, image errors are unavoidable, and no matter how precise a clock is, there will always be more or less error. The definition of a second for the world's most accurate clock is based on the number of cycles of electromagnetic waves from cesium atoms, with an error of one second every 30 million years. A research team led by Hideyoshi Nishi-angqu, a professor at the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Engineering, chose strontium atoms, which measure time more accurately than cesium atoms, for the experiment. The strontium atoms were laser-enclosed in a lattice space of about two-thousandths of a millimeter, and then the number of vibrations was counted, making this optical lattice clock the most accurate in the world.

In addition, the atoms are not susceptible to electromagnetic waves, even at low temperatures. This led to the development of an optical lattice clock that could operate at minus 170 degrees Celsius, with an eventual error of only 1 second over 16 billion years.