On: A clock that can detect tiny shifts in the flow of time itself

[wuliwong]

If one part of this clock is accurate to 10^-16 but noise/error contributed by some other aspect of it is larger than that, then it is misleading to claim these clocks have an accuracy of 10^-16.

This is the same type of stuff they are dealing with in the gravitational wave experiments like LIGO and VIRGO. They have amazing sensitivity but it is still lost in the noise. They don't claim to be able to make measurements to accuracy which is lower than the noise levels. And I don't see why these clock people should either.

[aqme28 → wuliwong]

I may be wrong but this sounds like a confusion of accuracy vs. precision (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accuracy_and_precision)

edit: By which I mean that this clock could be precise to 10^-16 but be off by 10^-14 due to a mis-calibration.