{"id":4004,"date":"2018-05-25T01:44:16","date_gmt":"2018-05-25T01:44:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2018\/05\/25\/optical-lattice-clocks-2\/"},"modified":"2018-05-25T01:46:33","modified_gmt":"2018-05-25T01:46:33","slug":"optical-lattice-clocks-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/2018\/05\/25\/optical-lattice-clocks-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Optical Lattice Clocks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Very cool stuff. Warning: the article gets pretty far down into the weeds.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The accuracy of the cesium clock has improved greatly since 1955, increasing by a factor of 10 or so every decade. Nowadays, timekeeping based on cesium clocks accrues errors at a rate of just 0.02 nanosecond per day. If we had started such a clock when Earth began, about 4.5 billion years ago, it would be off by only about 30 seconds today.<\/p>\n

But we can do better. A new generation of atomic clocks that use laser light instead of microwave radiation can divide time more finely. About six years ago, researchers completed single-ion versions of these optical clocks, made with an ion of either aluminum or mercury. These surpassed the accuracy of cesium clocks by a full order of magnitude.<\/p>\n

Now, a new offshoot of this technology, the optical-lattice clock (OLC), has taken the lead. Unlike single-ion clocks, which yield one measurement of frequency at a time, OLCs can simultaneously measure thousands of atoms held in place by a powerful standing laser beam, driving down statistical uncertainty. In the past year, these clocks have managed to surpass the best single-ion optical clocks in both accuracy and stability. With further development, they will lose no more than a second over 13.8 billion years\u2014the present-day age of the universe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

https:\/\/spectrum.ieee.org\/aerospace\/satellites\/introducing-the-worlds-most-precise-clock<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Very cool stuff. Warning: the article gets pretty far down into the weeds. The accuracy of the cesium clock has improved greatly since 1955, increasing by a factor of 10 or so every decade. Nowadays, timekeeping based on cesium clocks accrues errors at a rate of just 0.02 nanosecond per day. If we had started […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3pfIY-12A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4004"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4005,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4004\/revisions\/4005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.novonon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}