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A new record-breaking atomic clock is so precise it neither loses nor gains a second in five billion years - longer than the age of the Earth.

The 'strontium lattice clock' is 50% more accurate than the previous record holder, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) quantum logic clock.

Researchers say the clock is so accurate, it can even reveal the effect gravity has on time.

Atomic clocks operate by means of atoms oscillating between two energy levels. In the strontium lattice clock, a few thousand atoms of strontium are held in a column of laser optical traps (pictured).

The clock was developed in the US at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics (JILA), by a team from NIST and the University of Colorado.

Group leader Dr Jun Ye said when it was unveiled in Nature earlier this year: 'We already have plans to push the performance even more.

'So in this sense, even this new Nature paper represents only a 'mid-term' report.

'You can expect more new breakthroughs in our clocks in the next five to 10 years.'

In terms of stability, the new clock equals the performance of NIST's world-leading ytterbium atomic clock.

Atomic clocks operate by means of atoms oscillating between two energy levels.

In the strontium lattice clock, a few thousand atoms of strontium are held in a column of laser optical traps.

Scientists detect the clock's 'ticks' - 430 trillion of them a second - by bathing the atoms in very stable red laser light.

The precise frequency of the laser trigger prompts the switch between energy levels. 

'Our aim is that we'll have a clock that, during the entire age of the universe, would not have lost a second,' Ye told NPR.

However, the clock has hit a snag - time doesn't pass at the same rate everywhere on Earth. 

The watch of the future? US scientists say the 'strontium lattice clock' is 50% more accurate than the previous record holder, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) quantum logic clock.

The speed at which time passes depends on the strength of gravity, part of Einstein's theory of relativity, and it is a very real effect. 

If you take a clock off the floor, and hang it on the wall, Ye says, 'the time will speed up by about one part in 1016.'

The new clock, however, is sensitive enough to spot this.

'Lift it just a couple of centimeters and you will start to see that difference,' Ye says. 

'At this level, maintaining absolute time scale on earth is in fact turning into nightmare.

'This clock they've built doesn't just look chaotic. It is turning our sense of time into chaos.'

The answer, Ye claims, is to send these new clocks into space.