A Japanese company has launched the world’s most precise clock, which would take 10 billion years to lose a single second.
Kyoto-based precision equipment maker Shimadzu Corp put its “Aether clock OC 020” on sale for $3.3 million on Wednesday. The cutting-edge timepiece, known as a “strontium optical lattice clock,” is 100 times more accurate than caesium atomic clocks, the current global standard for defining time.
Housed in a box about a metre tall, the machine resembles a squat refrigerator and has a volume of around 250 litres. Despite its size, it is considered compact for its kind and can be used in research fieldwork.
Shimadzu aims to sell 10 units over the next three years, targeting scientific institutions involved in advanced research, including the study of tectonic activity.
Similar optical lattice clocks have been used for experiments at Tokyo’s Skytree tower to test Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which posits that time slows down in areas of stronger gravity.
