It’s about time

There’s a new atomic clock now, three times more accurate than ever before. Ars Technica:

The previous atomic clock, called NIST-F1, was launched in 1999. It was accurate to within plus or minus one second over the course of 100 million years. The newly launched atomic clock, called NIST-F2, is accurate to within plus or minus one second over 300 million years.

There are no current applications for such extreme accuracy. And so why, pray tell? NIST physicist Steven Jefferts, lead designer of NIST-F2:

“If we’ve learned anything in the last 60 years of building atomic clocks, we’ve learned that every time we build a better clock, somebody comes up with a use for it that you couldn’t have foreseen.”……In other news, coon you’ll be able to get an atomic wristwatch.