Usually these application, while they're good, they're just the initial idea people have given the current understanding
The cool applications usually come later (or they're more esoteric). The researchers were more excited to determine the actual frequency than think about clocks
We derrive most of our other units from time, so differences in time accuracy translate into metrology improvements more generally.
Existing atomic clocks based on electrical interactions are extremely sensitive to the surrounding magnetic and electrical environment-- so for example accuracy is limited by collisions with other atoms, so state of the art atomic clocks have optically trapped clouds in high vacuums. Beyond limiting their accuracy generally makes the instruments very complex.
One could imagine an optical-nuclear atomic clock in entirely solid state form on a single chip with minimal support equipment achieving superior stability to a room sized instrument.
If atomic clocks become a few orders of magntidude better than the current state of the art (see atomic lattice clocks) then such clocks would do direct gravitational wave measurements and measure some fundemental constants.
The latter is important in physics to determine if these constants are truly constant in space and time. Which is a large assumption we have about the universe.
Sounds interesting. If you don't mind me asking, what sort of computation requires synchronization across data centers? And why couldn't it be done with NTP?
Essentially distributed consistency and co-ordination. NTP isn't accurate/consistent enough because of light speed being limited. This matters for applications like network management and large scale control.
If I remember correctly GPS is effected but the ultra precise version the gov uses can error correct pretty well. I would think greater GPS precision at a lower cost?
