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New Nuclear Clock Would Have Been Accurate to the Second Since the Beginning of the Universe

Timekeeping is a much more complicated endeavor than you might think. Other than setting clocks back and forward twice a year, which clocks mostly do on their own nowadays, everything seems to march onwards pretty steadily, right? Well sure, it seems that way, but on a bigger scale, it gets a little less accurate, which is why we have leap days and even leap seconds. A new kind of nuclear clock might make things way simplier, however. A clock like this won’t lose — or gain — even a mere 1/20th of a second over the course of 14 billion years, also known as the approximate age of the known universe.

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Traditional nuclear clocks use an atom’s orbiting electron as a clock pendulum. This new kind of clock aims to use the neutron. Professor Flambaum, one of the researchers on the project, put it this way:

“With these clocks currently pushing up against significant accuracy limitations, a next-generation system is desired to explore the realms of extreme measurement precision and further diversified applications unreachable by atomic clocks. Atomic clocks use the orbiting electrons of an atom as the clock pendulum. But we have shown that by using lasers to orient the electrons in a very specific way, one can use the orbiting neutron of an atomic nucleus as the clock pendulum, making a so-called nuclear clock with unparalleled accuracy.”

It seems that an electron’s distance from the stablizing force of the nucleus can result in some inaccuracy. Granted, using an electron is way more accurate than, say, a physical pendulum, but even an electron pendulum will lose a non-trivial amount of time over the course of years. A neutron’s oscillation rate, however, is practically unaffected by any sort of variable, meaning that it can be used to make clocks nearly 100 times more accurate than the ones we have now, ones that are — effectively if not literally — perfect. Hopefully we can see these being practically applied in the near future and start making up for lost time.

(via Physorg)

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