Scandium-based nuclear clocks promise punctuality for next 300 billion years
- Reference: 1696238168
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/10/02/nuclear_clock_scandium/
- Source link:
Researchers working at European XFEL X-ray have examined the potential of scandium as the basis for nuclear clocks, long seen as the next step forward in accuracy over the current generation of atomic clocks.
Most atomic clocks rely on oscillators such as caesium, which can oscillate at very reliable frequencies when excited by microwave radiation. For example, the US Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology's NIST-F2 clock would neither gain nor lose one second in about 300 million years.
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But scientists have held the ambition of going one step further by using the oscillation of the atomic nucleus – rather than the electron shell – to create the next level in timekeeping.
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At the European XFEL X-ray laser, researchers have found a promising candidate in the element scandium. Readily available as a high-purity metal foil or as the compound scandium dioxide, the element's atomic resonances are much more acute than those of electrons in the atomic shell.
[4]NIST boffins shrink atomic beam clock to the size of a postage stamp
[5]Orolia inks €70m deal to provide atomic clocks for second generation of EU's Galileo navigation satellites
[6]It's about time! NASA's orbital atomic clock a boon for deep space navigation – if they can get it working for long enough
[7]Twilight of the sundials: Archaic timepiece dying out and millennials are to blame, reckons boffin
However, they are trickier to get wobbling, requiring X-rays with an energy of 12.4 kiloelectronvolts, about 10,000 times the energy of visible light. Such excitement produces an extremely narrow resonant width, a key factor in clock accuracy. The researchers showed a width of only 1.4 femtoelectronvolts, 1 x 10 -15 feV, which might make an accuracy of 1:10,000,000,000,000 possible.
Ralf Röhlsberger, researcher at Germany's Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron, was part of the team. He said the level of accuracy possible from a nuclear clock using scandium could be equivalent to one second in 300 billion years, according [8]to a statement .
In other words, if your watch loses a second a year, it will be 9,512 years slow by the time a nuclear clock based on scandium is a second out.
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The research group was led by Yuri Shvyd'ko, senior physicist at the Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Illinois.
Releasing the news in [10]a paper published in the journal Nature, the researchers said: "These advancements enable the application of this isomer in extreme metrology, nuclear clock technology, ultra-high-precision spectroscopy and similar applications." ®
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[4] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/27/nist_atomic_beam_clock/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/09/orolia_galileo_atomic_clocks/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/01/nasa_atomic_space_clock/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2019/02/18/sundials_dying_out_and_millennials_are_to_blame/
[8] https://www.desy.de/news/news_search/index_eng.html?openDirectAnchor=2939&two_columns=1
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[10] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06491-w
[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Roughly accurate
316,952,044,811.3503559017
That's only like 73 bit precision?
The end of time?
Given the estimated age of the universe and the oscillating universe theory, I wonder if this would take accuracy to the end of time?
Accuracy v. going rate?
The ability of a chronometer to maintain accuracy (not to drift with respect to its initial setting) has traditionally been referred to as 'going rate'. This is not the same thing as accuracy, which refers to discrepancy between actual time and represented time at a given moment. This timepiece apparently has a going rate of 1 second in 300 billion years, but its absolute accuracy will depend on how it's synchronised with absolute time at the moment it's set running. And by the way, what is absolute time anyway - once we 're talking in terms of seconds per billion years, what's the reference?
Re: Accuracy v. going rate?
This timepiece apparently has a going rate of 1 second in 300 billion years
Is that 1 second spread uniformly across 300 billion years or say there is going to be a 1 second jump at any moment within 300 billion time period?
Imagine if you always wake up at 6:30 and that one day your alarm clock goes off at 6:29:59. That's easily the whole day ruined.
> extreme metrology
I just wanted to say that I love those two words together.
Roughly accurate
> accuracy of up to 1 second in 300 billion years
Given the claim to accuracy, a time limit of 300 billion years sounds a little approximate. You'd kinda hope that the people who made that forecast would be able to nail down the limit of that 1 second accuracy a bit closer. Say to 316,952,044,811.3503559017 years