Tiny Asian country beats China, USA to world's most accurate clock — Lutetium-based device loses 1 second every 264 billion years
Singapore just beat China and the US for the atomic clock accuracy record with a single lutetium ion.
Singapore's researchers have developed the world's most accurate atomic clock, using a single charged atom of lutetium. This remarkable achievement, detailed in a paper published in Nature, sets a new record with evaluated fractional uncertainties of 1.2 × 10⁻¹⁹ and 1.3 × 10⁻¹⁹, marking improvements over previous contenders such as China's calcium clock and the United States' aluminum clock.
The team at the National University of Singapore's Centre for Quantum Technologies reported the clocks and confirmed their superior accuracy by comparing them over 200 hours, achieving a precision never before matched. This advancement, which would cause a clock to lose only one second over a period of 264 billion years, emphasizes the potential for more precise timekeeping beyond the current standard based on cesium atoms.
The researchers, confident in their accomplishment, are now working on miniaturizing the clock for transportable use, potentially offering a new method to verify the accuracy of other laboratories at a microscopic level.
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