2 comments
> Today’s best atomic clocks are billions of times more accurate and precise than any other type of clock. If they had been running since the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago, they would have lost or gained less than a second.<p>Absolutely incredible, but then confused by the next assertion that is made without context:<p>> New kinds of clocks may soon open up capabilities that previous generations could only dream about.<p>What is possible by pushing past that incredibly narrow margin of 1s in 13b years? What dreamy capabilities do we get that we don’t enjoy today?<p>Edit: I’d assumed they were talking about new approaches to making these clocks more accurate, but I wonder if they’re referring to power and form factors? I.E. an atomic clock the size of a grain of rice: <a href="https://www.nist.gov/noac/success-story-chip-scale-atomic-clock" rel="nofollow">https://www.nist.gov/noac/success-story-chip-scale-atomic-cl...</a>
Pretty sure you can rig something far better than radar if you have the ability to detect extremely tiny gravitational waves via an array of hyper-accurate clocks.
There are still big leaps, like their optical lattice clock that's sensitive to the gravitational difference caused by tidal effects on the earth's crust.<p>It can detect gravitational differences of a few cm!
What are these atomic clocks measured against?
Fun fact, two (very expensive) wristwatches have actual atomic timekeeping in them, instead of just receiving a radio time signal: the Bathys Hawaii Cesium 133, and a few different shaped from Hoptroff London.<p>All released 2013-2015. Not sure what happened then for there to be suddenly two.
Symmetricom (now owned by Microchip) released the first Chip Scale Atomic Clocks in 2011. It probably took some time for them to become available to watch designers and for them to be integrated into watch designs.<p><a href="https://www.nist.gov/noac/success-story-chip-scale-atomic-clock" rel="nofollow">https://www.nist.gov/noac/success-story-chip-scale-atomic-cl...</a><p>I'm guessing the watches sold poorly and the chip packages are still large compared to a watch movement, so no new designs.