Comment on Most Precise Atomic Clock Ever Built Will Only Lose a Second Every 30 Billion Years

solrize@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• corroded@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  In clocks like this, the “set time” is often irrelevant. It’s more important to know exactly how much time has passed since the last time the clock was “checked.” If you’re running a radio transmitter at 6ghz, that’s 6 billion cycles per second. If you synch your transmitter to your clock once per second, it had better be accurate to the billionth of a second.

  source

  • xenoclast@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    This. Clocks like this are for measuring duration in a scientific context.

    source

    • MonkderDritte@feddit.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Or tech.

      source

      • xenoclast@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Oh duh, yeah. The most obvious example.

        source
• anton@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  The other atomic clocks that are averaged to give us our ground truth for time.

  source