A Clock That Keeps Perfect Time Forever

iStock/Thinkstock(TOKYO) — Imagine a clock so accurate that you don’t ever have to worry about it giving you the wrong time even if you happen to live for 16 billion years.

Well, the two “cryogenic optical lattice clocks” invented by University of Tokyo researchers aren’t exactly perfect. They are destined to lose about a second every sixteen million millennium.

Without getting too much into the minutia of how they work, the clocks trap strontium atoms and measure their vibrations in an environment of minus 292 degrees Fahrenheit in order to reduce electromagnetic waves that can affect their accuracy.

Lead researcher Hidetoshi Katori said they figured out the clocks would lose a second every 16 billion years after connecting them for a month.

They’re much more reliable than the current state-of-the-art caesium atomic clock, which manages to lose a second every 30 million years.

What’s the purpose of all this? Essentially, to redefine just what a “second” is.

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