Nuclear clock steals the crown of atomic clock! Now researchers have developed a more accurate clock than the atomic clock,so lets see how accurate it is?
Atomic clocks are the basis of GPS devices, they define the official length of the second and recently played a role in tracking subatomic particles that seemingly travelled faster than the speed of light. Now this "ultimate" timekeeper has a rival: a new method for making nuclear clocks suggests such devices could be 60 times as accurate as their atomic rivals.
A nuclear clock has not yet been made but the idea would be to use the atomic nucleus like a tuning fork. A nucleus will jump to a higher energy state, then fall back down, and jump up again, only if it is hit with a very specific frequency of light. Tuning a laser so that it prompts these jumps is a way to set its frequency with a phenomenal level of precision. The frequency can then be used like a clock's tick to keep time.The atomic clock is based on vibrations of electrons orbiting an atom,whereas the nuclear clock would be based on tuning the spatial orientation of electrons that cause the nucleus of an atom to jump back and forth between high and low energy states using a very specific frequency of light. After this ,the clock would be tuned by a laser that would drift only about one second in 200 billion years, or 14 times in the as believed age of the universe and 60 times more accurate than current atomic clocks. The only trick here apparently, is in figuring out just what that frequency would be.The accuracy of a clock is not really all that much of a big deal. For this reason Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is used for ordinary living. It is derived from atomic clock measurements which also uses leap seconds based on the rotation of the earth to help keep everyone straight. In GPS tracking there are four satellites used for tracking, some means of timing the signals is used (and for this it can be used) to coordinate data sent from them and relayed to Earth based navigation systems. The smaller the errors in timing, the more accurate the systems become.
The main reason the nuclear clock would be so much more accurate than the atomic clock is due to the fact that atomic clocks are susceptible to ambient magnetic and electric fields that can throw off the vibrations of the electrons a tiny bit. Using a laser to precisely control the nucleus bouncing between states however would not be nearly as susceptible to such interference.Such clocks could shed light on string theory. The frequency of the jumps in a nuclear clock will depend on the strong nuclear force, while the jumps by electrons in atomic clocks depend on a different fundamental force. So together they could reveal if the relative strength of the forces changes, as string theory has it.
[via:Physorg]
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