Chinese scientists develop low-cost quartz 'super watch' technology

Don't throw out your old quartz watch - with a slight tweak it could soon be accurate enough to guide a cruise missile, according to a new study by Chinese scientists.

An ordinary quartz watch, given a simple upgrade, can dramatically improve its timing accuracy - so much so that the margin of error would be less than a second over tens of thousands of years.

Accurate timing is crucial to precision-guided weapons, which use time differences to calculate speed and position.

Professor Lu Qingyou, the lead scientist of the study, said the technology was inspired by a new physical phenomenon they observed in quartz.

The clocking capability of quartz has been known for nearly a century. When applied with an alternating current, quartz crystal oscillators in the shape of a small tuning fork that are used in watches vibrate a stable frequency that provides accurate time measurement.

But even the remarkable stability of the compound is not permanent. Due to small but inevitable irregularities in the internal structure of quartz, the patterns of vibration shift over time, leading to errors.