31 Dec 2020 10 - 9 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1... Happy New Year! While the UK looks to Big Ben and the US have their Times Square pendulum, our New Year celebrations rely on pin point accurate timing. Now, a new kind of atomic clock, designed by MIT researchers, will enable even a half second off since the beginning of the Universe to seem like an unnecessary eternity. Entanglement-enhanced optical atomic clocks are no longer bound by the Standard Quantum Limit and will help enable physicists to decipher signals in the universe such as dark matter and gravitational waves. Atomic clocks are the most precise timekeepers in the world. These exquisite instruments use lasers to measure the vibrations of atoms, which oscillate at a constant frequency, like many microscopic pendulums swinging in sync. The best atomic clocks in the world keep time with such precision that, if they had been running since the beginning of the universe, they would only be off by about half a second today.