Researchers have unveiled the world’s first nuclear clock, a device with an astounding 99.9999999% accuracy that promises to revolutionize fields such as GPS navigation and fundamental physics, Study Finds reports.
Developed through a collaboration between the JILA institute in the United States and the Vienna University of Technology, the watch uses the unique properties of a thorium-229 atom to measure time with unparalleled precision.
This nuclear clock, recently described in the magazine Naturerepresents a major leap in high-precision timekeeping. Unlike current atomic clocks, which use energy transitions in the electron shell of an atom, the new clock uses transitions in the atomic nucleus itself, providing much greater stability and accuracy.
A watch 1 million times more accurate than others
Thorsten Schumm, a researcher at TU Wien, explained that if this clock were to run for the entire duration of the Universe – about 13.8 billion years – it would have a deviation of only 0.02 seconds.
The accuracy achieved in this experiment is astonishing. The research team at JILA claims that the measurements show that the clock is a million times more accurate than previous ones. This level of accuracy is similar to measuring the distance between New York and Los Angeles (4,500 km) to within a human hair.
Source: www.descopera.ro
