3 ms·
It'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
by teaearlgraycold 5y ago
It'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.