The need for a perfect clock
Scientists have been working on the most accurate clocks since time has been measured.
From atomic clocks to electro magnetic clocks, the need for perfect time measurement and observation is great and becomes more important with the use of digital devices.
In other words: We need a perfect working clock. Not only for knowing when the Sun rises and the Moon arrives, as our ancestors did with their natural clocks.
Today's world has to know much more about excact time measurement. And a split second is a basic element of this. This world is filled with digital devices using time as a fundamental constant, every time.
But now researchers have shown that time could be kept even more accurately with a new-generation of clocks called optical clocks, and they want to use the new system to redefine a second - which would mean we could squeeze even more into our days.
To compensate for the downtimes of today's optical clocks, the researchers combined a commercially available atomic clock device called a maser with a strontium optical lattice clock. The maser isn't as accurate, but it worked to cover the downtime of optical clocks.
Obviously, there was still a big gap between the accuracy of the two clocks, but the team overcame that by using an optical frequency comb, which divides the slower optical-based 'tick' to match the faster 'ticks' of the optical clocks.
