According to that supplied report, the clock is precise enough that it would lose one second every 260 billion years, or nearly 20 times the age of the universe (supplied source capture). The same report says that would make it about four times more accurate than the previous record-holder, a calcium-ion clock developed by China's Academy of Sciences, and better than an aluminum-ion clock unveiled last year by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST (supplied source capture).
How the team says it checked the result
The supplied report says the Singapore team built two independent lutetium clocks and compared them over 200 hours. Those two clocks reportedly agreed to within 5.7 parts in 10^19, which the same source describes as the most precise comparison ever reported between two atomic clocks (supplied source capture).
That kind of comparison matters because atomic clocks are ultimately judged not just by how sophisticated they sound on paper, but by whether separate devices can independently land on nearly the same answer. In this case, the reported result is the main reason the claim stands out.
Why lutetium matters here
The supplied text attributes part of the performance to lutetium's resistance to temperature and magnetic-field changes, saying it stays stable across the full range of temperatures found on Earth (supplied source capture). It also says lutetium can remain in an excited state for about a week, compared with just minutes for strontium, giving researchers more time to measure its frequency (supplied source capture).
In plainer terms, that would make the atom a steadier reference point for timekeeping, and a more forgiving one for researchers trying to measure it with extreme precision.
The supplied report says the research was published in Nature (supplied source capture). Because the evidence packet here includes supplied social and article captures rather than the paper itself, the specific performance comparisons and record claims should be understood as reported claims from those supplied sources, not as independently verified by Digg.
A separate supplied post from Malay Mail also characterizes the clock as record-setting and says it surpassed U.S. and Chinese efforts, but it does not add technical detail beyond that summary (supplied source capture).
