Not your average Timex
Quite the clock in Australia -- from the
University of New South Wales:
Nuclear clock may keep time with the Universe
A proposed new time-keeping system tied to the orbiting of a neutron around an atomic nucleus could have such unprecedented accuracy that it neither gains nor loses 1/20th of a second in 14 billion years - the age of the Universe.
�This is nearly 100 times more accurate than the best atomic clocks we have now,� says one of the researchers, Scientia Professor Victor Flambaum, who is Head of Theoretical Physics in the UNSW School of Physics.
�It would allow scientists to test fundamental physical theories at unprecedented levels of precision and provide an unmatched tool for applied physics research.�
In a paper to be published in the journal Physical Review Letters - with US researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Nevada - Flambaum and UNSW colleague Dr Vladimir Dzuba report that their proposed single-ion clock would be accurate to 19 decimal places.
Holy crap -- that blows everything else out of the water. -19 when most else is around -13 for lab grade to -17.
This neutrino walks into a bar...
Posted by DaveH at March 11, 2012 12:12 AM