Design a nuclear clock 100 times more accurate than the atomic
The Georgia Institute of Technology announced recently that an international team of scientists working on the construction of a clock with a margin of error of one tenth of a second every 14 billion years.
The extreme precision of the device, which is one hundred times greater than the current atomic clocks, comes from the core of a thorium ion.
The nuclear clock could be useful for certain communications confidential and for the study of fundamental theories of physics. It could also add precision global positioning system (GPS), which now relies on atomic clocks.
Mechanical devices operate with a pendulum which provides oscillations are measured with time. In modern watches are quartz crystals that provide high-frequency oscillations that operate as a musical tuning fork.
The precision of atomic clocks comes from the oscillations of electrons in atoms induced by laser beam. But these electrons can affect the electric and magnetic fields, so the atomic clocks sometimes suffer a deviation of about four seconds over the existence of the universe.
But neutrons are much heavier than electrons and are most densely clustered in the atomic nucleus and are thus less susceptible to such environmental conditions.
According to the article of the Georgia Institute of Technology to create the oscillations the researchers plan to use a laser that operates at high frequencies of petahertz 10 to 15 power, or 1,000,000,000,000,000 oscillations per second, to make the core of an ion of thorium 229 pass to a higher energy state.
The “tuning” of a laser to create these higher energy states allow scientists fixate very precise frequency and that frequency would be used to mark time, rather than the ticking of a clock or the swing of a pendulum.
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