Miniature atomic clocks

[mubs]

Story here.

<snip>

The clock's inner workings are about the size of a grain of rice, consume less than 75 thousandths of a watt, and are so stable that just one second every 300 years is gained or lost.

<snip>

They need to put these on motherboards asap.

 

[Bookmage]

Cool! This would be perfect for a computer! With that size, it could fit anywhere. Hrm... thats one less reason to be late for class...

 

[jtr1962]

This is one of the most intriguing things I've seen in a long time. As accurate as quartz watches are, they still gain or lose noticeable amounts of time. I remember adjusting two of my watches to keep better time. Eventually, by moving the trimpot by barely perceptible increments, I had the watches to where they now keep time to within a few seconds per year. I like the thought of having a watch which is 1000 times more accurate while requiring no adjustments at all.

Just for reference, 75mW is about what an LED consumes. In order to make this useable in things like watches the power consumption needs to be dropped by about four orders of magnitude, but it's a great for mains-powered devices like PCs as is.