In experiments, researchers started by smashing some high-energy protons into some uranium. The trouble is that thorium is hard to get your hands on and the exact frequency needed for excitation isn't yet clear. Some have an extra neutron, which is called carbon-13. Most carbon atoms have 6 protons and 6 neutrons in the nucleus (red and white balls in this illustration), called carbon-12. The basic premise is to smack an atom of thorium-229 with a laser, get it all excited, then measure how much energy comes off of it as it falls back to its baseline state. Nuclear clocks, theoretical as they might be, work on a similar foundation as atomic clocks, by striking a specific material with a specific frequency of energy and watching what happens. Nuclear clocks could offer time-keeping several orders of magnitude more accurate than atomic clocks, according to a new study published in the journal Nature. The development and ubiquity of GPS navigation systems relies heavily on atomic clocks, which calculate the transit time of light between you and the satellite array to determine your position. Scientists didn't really know what they were going to do with atomic clocks before they built them, and they've been incredibly useful. Figuring out an even more accurate way to keep time feels almost like a solution looking for a problem. Some might feel that less than a second of drift over tens of billions of years is as good as clocks ever need to be. Antimatter and matter atoms are the same, but the particles have opposite charges.Ītomic clocks are so accurate, in fact, that if we had started one up at the moment of the Big Bang and kept it running for the last 13.8 billion years, it would still be accurate to within a second. Those state changes happen at regular intervals, making them useful for timekeeping.įanciful artwork depicting an atom. When exposed to the right frequency of energy, electrons in an atom jump back and forth between energy states. Instead of the swaying of a pendulum, atomic clocks work by watching the predictable oscillations in an atom. Even modern analog clocks have small discrepancies which stack up over time until you realize that your clock is several minutes off of true.Ītomic clocks also have discrepancies, but they're so small that it's almost not worth thinking about them. Throughout human history, we have been reliant on a number of different technologies to track the passage of time, each of which has its own limitations. RELATED: MIT's Quantum Entangled Atomic Clock Could Still be Ticking After Billions of Years Mechanical clocks use a swinging pendulum, but there's no reason you couldn't track time passing in the number of wiggles per womble, instead of seconds and minutes. Unlocking Atomic TimeĪll you really need to make a clock is something which ticks or oscillates at regular intervals, and something else which can count those ticks or oscillations. And there are even more accurate nuclear clocks coming down the pipe. It also means we've been able to count those minutes more accurately than ever, thanks to atomic clocks. The invention of nuclear weapons means we've spent the last half-century counting the minutes to midnight on the Doomsday Clock. Catch Christopher Nolan's vision of how that happened in Oppenheimer, in theaters now! They also set the atomic age into motion. By the time they were finished, they had succeeded in making the most powerful bomb (at the time) ever created. Robert Oppenheimer and crew set to work at Los Alamos, they were largely focused on the destructive potential of the atom.
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