Researchers have demonstrated a new optical atomic clock that uses a single laser and doesn't require cryogenic temperatures. By greatly reducing the size and complexity of atomic clocks without sacrificing accuracy and stability, ...
Quantum Physics
Sep 18, 2024
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71
Here on Earth, it might not matter if your wristwatch runs a few seconds slow. But crucial spacecraft functions need accuracy down to one billionth of a second or less. Navigating with GPS, for example, relies on precise ...
Space Exploration
Sep 18, 2024
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2
Scientists use atomic clocks to measure the "second," the smallest standard unit of time, with great precision. These clocks use natural oscillations of electrons in atoms, similar to how pendulums work in old grandfather ...
General Physics
Sep 13, 2024
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164
NASA will coordinate with U.S. government stakeholders, partners, and international standards organizations to establish a Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC) following a policy directive from the White House in April. The agency's ...
Space Exploration
Sep 12, 2024
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22
The world keeps time with the ticks of atomic clocks, but a new type of clock under development—a nuclear clock—could revolutionize how we measure time and probe fundamental physics.
General Physics
Sep 4, 2024
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149
Researchers in the Neutral Atom Optical Clocks Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), University of Colorado and Pennsylvania State University recently devised a new sub-recoil Sisyphus cooling ...
For decades, the moon's subtle gravitational pull has posed a vexing challenge—atomic clocks on its surface would tick faster than those on Earth by about 56 microseconds per day. This extremely small difference doesn't ...
Astronomy
Aug 12, 2024
7
142
Researchers at the Ye Lab at JILA (the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado Boulder) and University of Delaware recently created a highly precise optical lattice clock based on trapped ...
Tantalizing evidence of potential dark matter objects has been detected with the help of the universe's "timekeepers." These pulsars—neutron stars which rotate and emit lighthouse-like beams of radio waves that rapidly ...
Astronomy
Jul 15, 2024
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121
The nearest millisecond pulsar PSR J0437-4715 has a radius of 11.4 kilometers and a mass 1.4 times that of the sun. These are the results of precision measurements made by a team of researchers led by the University of Amsterdam ...
Astronomy
Jul 11, 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
