That's why we use atomic - or microwave - clocks, which measure the vibration of a caesium atom to keep time, just like the tiny swinging of a pendulum. And since 1967, a SI second has been defined as 9,192,631,770 cycles of those vibrations. But, as specific as that sounds, even the best atomic clocks can still accumulate an error of about 1 nanosecond over a month.
这也是我们应用原子钟或微波钟的原因,它们通过测量铯原子的摆动来计时,就像一个钟摆在轻微摆动。自1967年以来,国际计量系统定义的一秒就是91亿9263万1770次这种微小摆动。但是,尽管听起来很精准,即使是最好的原子钟在一个月的时间内也仍然会积累出十亿分之一秒的误差。
Optical clocks, on the other hand, are even more precise. They work similarly to atomic clocks, but they measure the oscillations of atoms or ions that vibrate at frequencies about 100,000 times higher than microwave frequencies - which is a whole lot faster, and therefore more accurate.
另一方面,光学钟却更为精确。它们的工作原理与原子钟相似,测量原子或离子的振动,但这些原子或离子的摆动频率大约是微波频率的10万倍左右——这要快得多,因此也更为准确。
"Our study is a milestone in terms of practical implementation of optical clocks," said one of the researchers, Christian Grebing, from the National Metrology Institute of Germany, "The message is that we could today implement these optical clocks into the time-keeping infrastructure that we have now, and we would gain."
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