A team of French scientists believe they have identified a more accurate way of keeping time that could eventually lead to the redefinition of the second, according to a study published in the journal Nature Communications.
Beginning in 1967, the second has been based internationally in caesium atomic clocks, which measure time by using microwaves to probe atoms as they transit between two energy levels.
Though impressive, the atomic clock uses the regular "vibrations" of an atom to keep time, much like a grandfather clock uses the swing of a pendulum. And while microwave radiation operates at a frequency of about 10 Gigahertz, a laser beam comes in at roughly 40,000 times that, meaning it can dissect the "tick" into many more time intervals than a standard atomic cesium clock and, as a result, offer higher accuracy.
For this reason, the clocks under examination at the Paris Observatory, called optical lattice clocks (OLCs), include atoms of the radioactive element strontium trapped and measured by laser light. First discovered less than a decade ago, the French scientists have proven in their latest study that two of these clocks are capable of remaining as perfectly in step as experimental precision can establish - an important step in establishing OLCs as the new standard in time keeping.
Furthermore, the scientists were able to show that the innovative clocks lose just one second every 300 million years versus their caesium rivals, which are accurate to one second every 100 million years.
Should OLCs become the new benchmark, it's true that the average person won't see any changes in, for example, the arrival of the next train or the promptness of their habitually on-time friend. Where such seeming nuances are significant, according to the BBC and Nature, have to do with satellite navigation, stock market exchanges and the measuring of Einstein's theory of general relativity, among others.