Secret Military Lab Developing UK's First Quantum Clock

A strontium atomic clock, pictured in a lab at the University of Colorado Boulder in the United States (Credit: AFP)

A top-secret lab in the UK is developing the country's first quantum clock to help the British military boost intelligence and reconnaissance operations, the defense ministry said Thursday.

The clock is so precise that it will lose less than one second over billions of years, "allowing scientists to measure time at an unprecedented scale," the ministry said in a statement.