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A fundamental trade-off between the resolution of a clock and its accuracy could have important implications for quantum computers, which must measure short timescales accurately Countdown Watch
Quantum computers need to measure small units of time very accurately FlashMovie/Getty Images
Quantum computers need to measure small units of time very accurately
There is a fundamental trade-off between making a clock accurate and counting ever shorter ticks, due to the second law of thermodynamics. This trade-off could one day be important for clocks in quantum computers, where computing operations occur on extremely short timescales with high accuracy.
A common way of expressing the second law of thermodynamics is that the amount of disorder in a system (its entropy) must always increase over time. As a consequence of this increasing disorder, there is…
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