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I love claims like this headline that rely entirely on our inability to observe the clock after the stated interval. We can be pretty sure that the clock will n
by Psychlist 5y ago
I love claims like this headline that rely entirely on our inability to observe the clock after the stated interval. We can be pretty sure that the clock will not be working at all, let alone accurate, but we can't be certain. At least until we get claims in the trillion year range, at which point the heat death effect will make the claim even more unlikely.
- teaearlgraycold 5y agoIt's just a matter of poor wording. I would hope that everyone's pedantry would be at bay should the title be "New atomic clock loses only one 300 billionth of a second every year".
- deepspace 5y agoI think it is more than pedantry. The clock will not last even a billionth of "300B years", and losing a whole second would be disastrous to its purpose. The kind of people who are interested in atomic clocks can surely understand "loses only 3 picoseconds per year".
- fsh 5y agoA car can measure its speed in kilometers per hour without having to travel for an hour. The choice of units is completely arbitrary and is ultimately a matter of taste. Most people know what a second is, and that a billion years is a really long time. They probably have no idea what a picosecond is. Clock experts generally use fractional frequency errors which have no unit at all.
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