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5 of the Most Precise Clocks Ever Made

By
Jesse Emspak
published March 20, 2015

 

(Image credit: Shutterstock/Kim D. French)

Most timepieces people use to tell time are accurate to within 10 or 15 seconds every month. Fancy mechanical watches (like a Rolex) will
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be off by more — a second or two each day. Scientists need something much more precise and accurate, because the phenomena they
measure often last just billionths of a second.

That's where the atomic clock comes in. The first accurate version was built in 1955. Atomic clocks keep time by measuring the oscillations
of atoms as they change energy states. Every element has a characteristic frequency or set of frequencies, and since the atom "beats"
billions of times per second such clocks are very precise. At the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the "official" second is
9,192,631,770 cycles of an atom of cesium. (The quartz in a watch oscillates at about 32,000 times per second, some 290,000 times slower
than cesium atoms.)

Scientists talk about atomic clocks in terms of stability and precision. For an atomic clock, precision is how well it measures the vibrations of
atoms. By comparing two clocks, scientists can measure the uncertainty in reading that frequency – how precise a clock is. Stability is how
much a clock's ticks vary over a given amount of time. Average a large number of ticks, say, 100,000 of them, and you will get a number
that can be measured against the actual time the clock keeps. Scientists usually refer to precision when they say a clock is so accurate that
it will gain or lose a second over millions of years. When they speak of accuracy, scientists typically are referring to how well a clock
matches a given standard reference, so in that sense the most accurate clock is always the one they set the standard second with. [Keeping
Time: Why 60 Seconds?]

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Tom O'Brian, chief of the NIST Time & Frequency division, noted several types of atomic clocks: The one used to determine the standard
second is based on cesium atoms, but other types use strontium, aluminum or mercury. Some use hydrogen. For even better precision, the
latest atomic clocks super-cool the atoms in them to eliminate any perturbations from ambient heat.

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The biggest buyer of atomic clocks, the telecommunications industry, deploys them to synchronize fiber optic switches and cellphone
towers, O'Brian said. Atomic clocks are also used in the GPS system to accurately measure the timing of signals and to report one's position
relative to the satellites.

Here are some of the most accurate clocks ever built, but O'Brian noted the technology is improving all the time, and scientists are trying to
craft ever more precise measurements of time.

1. The NIST F2

First brought on line in 2014, this clock, along with its predecessor, the NIST F1, helps to
determine the standard second used by scientists all over the world. The NIST F2 also
synchronizes telecommunications and even trading in financial markets for the official time of
day. The clock uses a set of six lasers to cool the atoms (about 10 million of them), while
another pair of lasers gently lofts the atoms upward inside a chamber filled with microwave
radiation. The frequency of the radiation that alters the states of the most atoms is what NIST
uses to define seconds.Its accuracy comes in part because it operates at a chill minus 316
degrees Fahrenheit (minus 193 degrees Celsius); the cold conditions help to shield the cesium
atoms from stray heat that could alter the measurements of the atom's oscillations. This clock
will gain or lose a second about once every 300 million years. [Top 10 Inventions That Changed
NIST physicists Steve
Jefferts (foreground) and
the World]
Tom Heavner with the
NIST-F2 cesium fountain 2. University of Tokyo/ RIKEN
atomic clock.
(Image credit: NIST)
Built by a team led by Hidetoshi Katori, this is an optical lattice atomic clock. It uses atoms of
strontium trapped between laser beams and
cooled to minus 292 F (minus 180 C). Optical lattice clocks measure the oscillations of
ensembles of trapped atoms, and so can average out any errors. Its uncertainty, reported in
the journal, Nature Photonics, on Feb. 9, is 7.2 x 10^-18, which is about a second every 4.4
billion years; the researchers said they were able to run two clocks of the same type to get that
down to 2.0 x 10^-18, or about a second every 16 billion years.

3. The NIST / JILA strontium clock

NIST and JILA, a joint institute at the University of Colorado, Boulder, built a strontium lattice
clock that reached a precision of 1 second every 5 billion years. The team, led by physicist Jun
Ye, published their work in 2014, and double-checked the results by running their clock against
The interferecence of laser
another just like it. O'Brian said NIST plans another clock experiment to push that even beams creates an "egg
further, to exceed the stability of the clock built by Katori's team in Japan. The clock works by box" optical lattice, with
each cup holding a single
trapping strontium atoms with lasers in a kind of pancake-shaped space. A red laser light atom. (Image credit: RIKEN)
tuned to a certain frequency makes the atoms
jump between energy levels, and those jumps are the "ticks" — some 430 trillion every second.

4. The Aluminum Quantum Logic Clock

NIST doesn't just use atoms of strontium and cesium. In 2010, NIST built an atomic clock that
used an atom of aluminum, with a precision of a second per 3.7 billion years. This one uses a
single atom of aluminum trapped in magnetic fields with a single atom of beryllium. Lasers
cool the two atoms to near absolute zero. Another laser is tuned to the frequency that makes
aluminum change states. But the states of aluminum are hard to measure accurately, so the
JILA's experimental atomic
aluminum is coupled to the beryllium atom. This is a similar process to that used in quantum
clock is based on strontium computing setups.
atoms held in a lattice of
laser light.
(Image credit: Ye group
5. The Shortt-Synchronome Mechanical Clock
and Baxley/JILA)
Atomic clocks get all the glory, but O'Brian said
that before they came along scientists still had to use mechanical clocks — and some were
quite accurate. The Shortt clock, invented in 1921, was a standard scientific instrument in
observatories until atomic clocks replaced it. The clock was actually a dual system, consisting
of one pendulum in a vacuum tank linked by electric wires. The secondary clock would send an
electrical pulse every 30 seconds to the primary one, to ensure that the two stayed
synchronized, and the pendulum in the vacuum was made of a nickel and iron alloy to reduce
any thermal expansion, which would alter the length of the pendulum and thus its swing. The
clock is so accurate that the pendulums can be used to measure gravitational effects from the
 sun and moon, and it was this instrument that showed the Earth's rotation was not, in fact,
uniform. Tests at the U.S. Naval Observatory in the 1980s showed the clock Subscribe
had an accuracy of
1 second in about 12 years.

James Chin-wen Chou of

NIST stands with a
quantum logic clock based
on vibrations of a single
aluminum ion trapped
inside a metal cylinder.
(Image credit: J.
Burrus/NIST )

A Shortt-Synchronome free
pendulum clock in the NIST
Museum, Gaithersburg,
Maryland.
(Image credit: NIST/Public
Domain)

Jesse Emspak
Live Science Contributor

Jesse Emspak is a contributing writer for Live Science, Space.com and Toms Guide. He focuses on physics, human health and general
science. Jesse has a Master of Arts from the University of California, Berkeley School of Journalism, and a Bachelor of Arts from the
University of Rochester. Jesse spent years covering finance and cut his teeth at local newspapers, working local politics and police
beats. Jesse likes to stay active and holds a third degree black belt in Karate, which just means he now knows how much he has to
learn.

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