Weltnachrichten – AU – Scientists are reinventing the atomic clock and making it far more accurate

The watch on your wrist may seem pretty accurate in everyday life, but it has nothing compared to atomic clocks. Scientists use atomic clocks for a variety of purposes. The more accurate they are, the better they can provide useful data. The most common atomic clocks are an order of magnitude more accurate than your typical wall clock, but not perfect.

Now a team of researchers has come up with what they think is even more accurate than anything in use today, and over billions of years it would put most other atomic clocks to shame. That’s a bold move, but the scientists seem to have the data to back it up.

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There are a few things that will help make this new atomic clock more accurate than anything before. To start with, the team used ytterbium atoms instead of the more common cesium often used in atomic clocks. Ytterbium vibrates 100. 000 times more frequently per second than cesium, which means that smaller units of time can be measured.

In addition, the scientists used entangled particles for their watch. Quantum entanglement is a very bizarre feature of quantum mechanics that essentially allows two particles to be measured by observing only one of them. Two entangled particles are connected by mechanisms that are still poorly understood and seem to be receiving information from each other at a speed faster than that of light, which throws classical physics out the window.

In this new atomic clock, the entangled atoms were found to vibrate more precisely than a random atomic cloud, which gives this atomic clock the additional precision it needs for a worthwhile endeavor.

« It’s as if the light acts as a communication link between atoms, » said Chi Shu, co-author of the research, in a statement. “The first atom to see this light changes the light slightly, and that light also changes the second atom and the third atom. The atoms know each other through many cycles and behave similarly. ”

None of this means that modern atomic clocks are not good. In fact, the researchers note that if you started a modern atomic clock at the beginning of the birth of the universe – an estimated 13. 8 billion years ago – and to go through it to this day – it would only take about half a second. However, if the same clock used entangled atoms as MIT’s new model, it would be less than 100 milliseconds away, which is obviously a huge improvement.

Atom, atomic clock, quantum mechanics, quantum entanglement, physics