Japanese firm sells clock that needs resetting once every 3 million years

By Berk Kutay Gokmen

ISTANBUL (AA) – Japanese company Shimadzu Corp. announced Wednesday that it has launched the world’s first commercial optical lattice clock, which is said to measure time with a deviation of less than one second over 10 billion years.

The device, considered the most accurate on the market, measures 114 centimeters (44.8 inches) in width, 109.3 cm (43 inches) in height, and 65 cm (25.5 inches) in depth.

The Kyoto-based manufacturer plans to sell 10 units over the next three years at a suggested retail price of 500 million yen ($3.3 million) each, according to Kyodo News.

The company began accepting orders for the device in 2024 after developing a portable model in collaboration with researchers from institutions such as the University of Tokyo.

Its compact size allows it to be used outdoors, with potential applications in areas such as monitoring movements of the Earth's crust related to plate tectonics and volcanic activity.

The optical lattice clock, invented in 2001 by Hidetoshi Katori, a professor at the University of Tokyo, has a timekeeping uncertainty hundreds of times smaller than that of the cesium atomic clocks that currently define the second.