Atomic Clocks Make a Quantum Leap in Accuracy
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Atomic Clocks Make a Quantum Leap in Accuracy
1–10 of 45 posts
Re: Atomic Clocks Make a Quantum Leap in Accuracy
#2The coolest part it that it improves both stability and accuracy. Cesium is often touted as a good clock but it only has good accuracy. The short-term stability has more noise than something like a Rubidium clock that is very stable on the short-term but inaccurate(relative to cesium anyway) on the long term.
This is cool because it is the best in both dimensions.
Re: Atomic Clocks Make a Quantum Leap in Accuracy
#3Can I have a chip-scale one? With zero jitter? On every motherboard? Feeding TSC clock? Please? Pretty pretty pleaase?
Re: Atomic Clocks Make a Quantum Leap in Accuracy
#4Hate to be that guy when it comes to being pedantic about headlines, but wouldn't a `quantum leap` in accuracy be rather un-noteworthy?
Re: Atomic Clocks Make a Quantum Leap in Accuracy
#5Hate to be that guy when it comes to being pedantic about headlines, but wouldn't a `quantum leap` in accuracy be rather un-noteworthy?
Or it could mean, in this case, a leap in what is considered to the smallest discernible difference (the quantum) of the measurement. ;)
Re: Atomic Clocks Make a Quantum Leap in Accuracy
#6[deleted]
Re: Atomic Clocks Make a Quantum Leap in Accuracy
#7This could be the basis of a future tricorder or Star Trek-like sensor array. Three ultra-sensitive clocks in an array should be able to infer mass and motion both for the unit and objects in the local area indirectly. Relativistic effects are minuscule, but not non-existent. Extremely-tuned clocks would have some pretty cool capabilities.
Re: Atomic Clocks Make a Quantum Leap in Accuracy
#8The coolest part it that it improves both stability and accuracy. Cesium is often touted as a good clock but it only has good accuracy. The short-term stability has more noise than something like a Rubidium clock that is very stable on the short-term but inaccurate(relative to cesium anyway) on the long term. This is cool because it is the best in both dimensions.
The phase noise (really short term stability) of a rubidium oscillator is rather poor compared to on ovenized quartz oscillator. So what I really want is a strontium disciplined OCXO.
Re: Atomic Clocks Make a Quantum Leap in Accuracy
#9This could be the basis of a future tricorder or Star Trek-like sensor array. Three ultra-sensitive clocks in an array should be able to infer mass and motion both for the unit and objects in the local area indirectly. Relativistic effects are minuscule, but not non-existent. Extremely-tuned clocks would have some pretty cool capabilities.
One thing I've spent some time thinking about is whether it would be possible to use atomic clocks to get a better measurement of the gravitational constant G. (G is by far the most poorly known of all the fundamental physical constants.) The idea would be to build a sphere whose mass is very precisely known and place one clock near the mass and one clock far away. By measuring the gravitational time dilation you could infer G. As I recall from my order of magnitude calculations, atomic clocks would have to improve in accuracy by four orders of magnitude or so before this would be feasible. So it would still be a long ways off.
Re: Atomic Clocks Make a Quantum Leap in Accuracy
#10In a vacuum, you could get GPS accuracy down to 700 nanometers with clocks that accurate [1]. If only that pesky atmosphere didn't get in the way!
[1]: http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%281+second+%2F430+tril...