China to launch world’s first ‘cold’ atomic clock in space ... and it’ll stay accurate for a billion years
Device should lose only a second in one billion years
The clock is ticking for the world’s most accurate working time piece, the NIST-F2 atomic clock operated by America’s National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado.
And fittingly, the challenge is coming from the country that invented the mechanical clock almost 1,300 years ago – China.
Now we’ve scooped them, it is understandable that some might feel a bit sour
The US clock is a large, heavy machine, standing more than 2.5 metres high, with support facilities filling an entire room, but it is so accurate that it would lose just one second in 300 million years.
In contrast, the Cold Atomic Clock in Space (Cacs) recently developed by researchers in Shanghai can easily be lifted by two people and would fit comfortably in the boot of a car. But it is expected to be three times more accurate than NIST-F2, losing only a second in one billion years.
It will be able to beat the US clock because it will have escaped the negative grip of gravity.
“It is the world’s first cold atomic clock to operate in space ... it will have military and civilian applications,” said Professor Xu Zhen, a scientist involved with the Cacs project.