In 2011, Safronova and colleagues gained widespread media attention when they reported on their atomic clock research at a national conference. The researchers devised a new calculation to aid ultra-precise timekeeping, findings that could potentially lead to the development of an atomic clock that loses only a second in about 32 billion years — more than twice the estimated age of the universe. Only four years later in 2015, the latest modification of a record-setting strontium atomic clock achieved precision and stability levels that now meant the clock would neither gain nor lose one second in some 15 billion years— roughly the age of the universe.