World s most accurate clock goes on sale for 4 5 million

KYOTO - If time is money, precision in nanoseconds can be measured in millions of dollars.

Shimadzu Corporation, a Kyoto, Japan-based precision equipment maker, has started selling a clock which is accurate to a deviation of one second over 10 billion years.

The strontium optical lattice clock is the first of its kind to be commercially available and will cost about 500 million yen (S$4.5 million).

The device measures time by using the optical transition of atoms confined in standing waves of light.

It was developed in collaboration with The University of Tokyo and research institute Riken and is about 100 times more precise than the traditional cesium atomic clocks that currently define the second.

The company will start selling the clock from March 5 and targets sales of 10 units over three years both in Japan and overseas.

It anticipates customers will use it for advanced scientific research. The timepiece is the most accurate that can be purchased, though there are potentially more accurate clocks under research, according to the company. BLOOMBERG

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