The World’s First Nuclear Clocks Are Ticking
- Researchers at Tsinghua University in Beijing and in Vienna have developed working nuclear clocks, with initial results published in Nature indicating the Chinese timepiece is more stable than the one from Vienna.
- For more than 70 years, scientists have used atomic clocks to measure time, but these new nuclear devices build on a 2003 proposal to track the atom's core rather than orbiting electrons.
- Atomic nuclei are about 100,000 times smaller than atoms, making these clocks less sensitive to external electric fields; however, they currently remain less stable than the best atomic clocks.
- Beijing scientists demonstrated reproducibility by showing separately grown crystals kept the same time, while Thorsten Schumm of the European team said, "Now we have a fierce but friendly global competition."
- These nuclear clocks could help scientists probe fundamental questions like detecting dark matter, though further work involving more powerful lasers may be required to overcome existing stability limitations.
29 Articles
29 Articles
Measuring with near-perfect accuracy is already a reality thanks to the University of Technology in Vienna, as they have installed the first global prototype of a new timing technology that is expected to set a new record of accuracy, according to what has been published in the journal ‘Nature’.Researchers from all over the world have been ... Continue reading "The age of nuclear clocks begins: countdown for the most accurate time measurement in…
Two independent teams of researchers, one in Europe and the other in China, have succeeded in developing thorium-based prototypes.
Austrian, German and Czech researchers have developed the world's first autonomous nuclear clock based on the isotope thorium-229, which is highly resistant to interference. Physicists have created atomic clocks that can operate in a completely autonomous mode, without external stabilization. A device based on thorium-229 nuclei is highly resistant to electromagnetic interference, TASS reported referring to the press service of the Vienna Techni…
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