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A Very Accurate Experimental Clock

According to researchers, an experimental clock which is based on a mercury ion won`t gain or lose a second in 400 years. The improvements will not be seen only in measuring time. The exact clock will bring to improvements in applications that rely on precise time computations, such as those used in wireless networks, global positioning and satellite systems.

In the journal Physical Review Letter an article was published this month by The National Institute of Standards and Technology. In the article it was said that an experimental atomic clock was created using a mercury ion that`s nearly five times more accurate than NIST-F1, the standard national clock operated by the institute.

The national clock used now is not that bad: if operated continuously, it would neither gain nor lose a full second in about 70 million years. The mercury clock takes that to 400 million years, and NIST researchers say they`ve made even more improvements since submitting their article. NIST physicist and principal investigator Jim Bergquist says: "The accuracy of the mercury-ion system is superior to that of the best cesium clocks". It can take almost a decade, however, until this kind of clock will replace cesium clocks used today.