Move over, Greenwich—there’s a new timekeeper in town, and it’s so precise that it can tell you when you blinked all the way to the 19th decimal place.
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have unveiled a “quantum logic clock” so accurate, it makes ordinary wristwatches look like sundials.
For the past 20 years, NIST physicists have been fine-tuning an aluminum‑ion clock that pairs an electrically charged aluminum atom with a magnesium “buddy ion.”
This dynamic duo uses quantum logic spectroscopy to cool, control, and read out the aluminum ion’s ultra‑steady “ticks.”
As Mason Marshall, the paper’s first author, puts it, “It’s exciting to work on the most accurate clock ever. At NIST, we get to carry out these long‑term plans in precision measurement that can push the field of physics and our understanding of the world around us.”
How Do You Improve an Already Insane Clock?
First, the team boosted accuracy by 41% over the previous record and ramped up stability to 2.6× that of any other ion clock.
They tackled excess micromotion—tiny, unwanted wobbles in the ion trap that throw off tick rates—by reengineering the trap on a thicker diamond wafer and applying beefier gold coatings to balance the electric fields.
Next, they swapped the steel vacuum chamber for a titanium one, reducing background hydrogen gas by 150×, so the ions can tick uninterrupted for days instead of demanding a reload every 30 minutes.
The Laser That Broke the Laser
Even with these upgrades, the clock still needed a more stable probe laser.
Enter Jun Ye’s JILA lab, home to one of the world’s quietest lasers.
By beaming an ultrastable laser 3.6 kilometers through fiber from JILA to NIST’s frequency comb, the group transferred Ye’s laser stability to the aluminum-ion clock.
The result?
Probing intervals leapt from 150 milliseconds to a full one second, slashing averaging time from three weeks to a day and a half.
Why Care About the 19th Decimal?
Beyond bragging rights, this record‑shattering precision helps redefine times "second" with unprecedented exactitude.
It also turns the clock into a powerful test-bed for quantum technologies—imagine entangling dozens of clock ions to push limits even further.
According to graduate student Willa Arthur‑Dworschack, “With this platform, we’re poised to explore new clock architectures—like scaling up the number of clock ions and even entangling them—further improving our measurement capabilities.”
Applications That Will Blow Your Mind (Literally)
High‑precision clocks aren’t just for showing off in physics conferences.
They can map Earth’s gravitational field via geodesy, hunt for tiny shifts in fundamental constants, and even test physics beyond the Standard Model.
As another graduate student, Daniel Rodriguez Castillo, explains, “It’s a big, complex challenge, because every part of the clock’s design affects the clock.”
But with every solved challenge, we unlock new scientific frontiers.
Meanwhile, project lead David Hume reminds us why aluminum got the starring role: “Its ticks are more stable than cesium’s, and it’s less sensitive to temperature and magnetic fields—if you can tame it, it’s the superstar of atomic timekeeping.”
So the next time you check your phone clock, give a silent salute to the NIST Ion Clock, quietly ticking its way into every corner of science… one 19th‑decimal‑place moment at a time.
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