The device, which traps thousands of atoms to keep time, is "pushing the boundaries of what's possible with timekeeping." The device traps thousands of atoms to keep time, and is "pushing the boundaries of what's possible with timekeeping."
In clocks like this, the “set time” is often irrelevant. It’s more important to know exactly how much time has passed since the last time the clock was “checked.” If you’re running a radio transmitter at 6ghz, that’s 6 billion cycles per second. If you synch your transmitter to your clock once per second, it had better be accurate to the billionth of a second.
What do you set it to?
In clocks like this, the “set time” is often irrelevant. It’s more important to know exactly how much time has passed since the last time the clock was “checked.” If you’re running a radio transmitter at 6ghz, that’s 6 billion cycles per second. If you synch your transmitter to your clock once per second, it had better be accurate to the billionth of a second.
This. Clocks like this are for measuring duration in a scientific context.
Or tech, like GPS.
Oh duh, yeah. The most obvious example.
The other atomic clocks that are averaged to give us our ground truth for time.