A team of international researchers has developed an innovative approach to uncover the secrets of dark matter. In a collaboration between the University of Queensland, Australia, and Germany's metrology institute (Physikalisch-Technische ...
General Physics
Jan 24, 2025
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Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have created a new thermometer using atoms boosted to such high energy levels that they are a thousand times larger than normal. By monitoring how these ...
Quantum Physics
Jan 23, 2025
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Telling time in space is difficult, but it is absolutely critical for applications ranging from testing relativity to navigating down the road. Atomic clocks, such as those used on the Global Navigation Satellite System network, ...
General Physics
Dec 19, 2024
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In the quest for ultra-precise timekeeping, scientists have turned to nuclear clocks. Unlike optical atomic clocks—which rely on electronic transitions—nuclear clocks utilize the energy transitions in the atom's nucleus, ...
General Physics
Dec 18, 2024
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For experiments that require ultra-precise measurements and control over atoms—think two-photon atomic clocks, cold-atom interferometer sensors and quantum gates—lasers are the technology of choice, the more spectrally ...
Optics & Photonics
Dec 12, 2024
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116
An optical lattice clock is a type of atomic clock that can be 100 times more accurate than cesium atomic clocks, the current standard for defining "seconds." Its precision is equivalent to an error of approximately one second ...
Optics & Photonics
Dec 2, 2024
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Time is vital to the functioning of our everyday lives: from the watches on our wrists to the GPS systems in our phones. Communication systems, power grids, and financial transactions all rely on precision timing. Seconds ...
General Physics
Nov 30, 2024
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Why are there atomic clocks but no nuclear clocks? After all, an atom's nucleus is typically surrounded by many electrons, so in principle it should be less susceptible to outside noise (in the form of light). A nucleus, ...
Physicists like to measure things, and they like those measurements to be as precise as possible. That means working at unfathomably small scales, where distances are much smaller than even the diameters of subatomic particles. ...
General Physics
Oct 9, 2024
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114
Quantum squeezing is a concept in quantum physics where the uncertainty in one aspect of a system is reduced while the uncertainty in another related aspect is increased.
Quantum Physics
Sep 27, 2024
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An atomic clock is a type of clock that uses an atomic resonance frequency standard as its timekeeping element. They are the most accurate time and frequency standards known, and are used as primary standards for international time distribution services, and to control the frequency of television broadcasts and GPS satellite signals.
Atomic clocks do not use radioactivity, but rather the precise microwave signal that electrons in atoms emit when they change energy levels. Early atomic clocks were masers with attached equipment. Currently the most accurate atomic clocks are based on absorption spectroscopy of cold atoms in atomic fountains such as the NIST-F1.
National standards agencies maintain an accuracy of 10-9 seconds per day (approximately 1 part in 1014), and a precision set by the radio transmitter pumping the maser. The clocks maintain a continuous and stable time scale, International Atomic Time (TAI). For civil time, another time scale is disseminated, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). UTC is derived from TAI, but synchronized, by using leap seconds, to UT1, which is based on actual rotations of the earth with respect to the mean sun.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
