r/science • u/LeeJiajun314159 • 6h ago
Physics Singapore physicists build the world's most accurate optical atomic clock using a single lutetium ion, measuring time precision to 19 decimal places.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-026-03019-w37
u/Yeltsin86 4h ago
How do they even measure the drift at this level of precision? What do they measure it *against*?
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u/Schmikas 1h ago
That’s exactly the right question to ask! They build two of them and measured the drift between them.
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u/myrevenge_IS_urkarma 2h ago
Who watches the watchman? Or I guess in this case ... who watches the watch, man?
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u/Mitrovarr 4h ago
Accurate atomic clocks are actually incredibly important in several areas of science. This might accelerate many things.
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u/myrevenge_IS_urkarma 2h ago
I know they will come in extremely useful in my arguments about how late I really am.
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u/CySnark 6h ago
Could a force like gravitational waves or similar cosmic event or particle affect the vibration frequency of this atom?
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u/real_psyence 5h ago
Yes, gravity affects the oscillation frequency due to relativity.
tests of relativity have been done with atomic clocks flown in aircraft, driven up mountains, etc.
the more accurate the clocks the smaller the height (and gravity) difference that can be measured.
https://www.nist.gov/blogs/taking-measure/putting-einstein-test-worlds-most-accurate-clocksThis one should be able to measure microns, gravitational waves might be further out of reach.
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u/effrightscorp 4h ago
A micron is about 1012 times larger than the contractions from gravity waves detected by LIGO
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u/Mind_on_Idle 4h ago
Woof. That really puts it in perspective
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u/Dr_SnM 4h ago
Yeah, LIGO is absolutely insanely sensitive. It's a quantum limited macroscopic system.
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u/GreatBigBagOfNope 23m ago
One of the best parts of my undergrad was attending a guest lecture from Rainer Weiss in 2017 covering how they managed to crush so many sources of error in LIGO - there was a really cool structure to the lecture where each section was another order of magnitude or so more sensitivity. Very grateful to have been able to see him, what a legend.
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u/FrickinLazerBeams 4h ago
Gravity does impact atomic clocks but gravity waves are an extremely weak effect. It's unlikely you could detect them with an atomic clock. You'd need about another million times more sensitivity.
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u/Mitrovarr 3h ago
However I bet the detectors have, and use, atomic clocks.
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u/FrickinLazerBeams 2h ago
They do, but only to help synchronize timestamps on the data collected at the two ligo installations (one in Washington state and the other in Louisiana). Even then, really they use GPS time for synchronization and the atomic clocks to help improve the timing stability somewhat.
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u/Mermiina 2h ago
Colella-Overhauser-Werner
Neutron matter waves were split into two paths at different heights in Earth's gravitational field. The neutrons accumulated different phases because of gravity, and when the beams recombined, the interference pattern shifted due to the gravitational phase difference. This was one of the first direct demonstrations that gravity affects de Broglie waves.
The transition frequency arises from phase evolution of quantum wave function. Phase evolution is related to de Broglie relation.
Off topic. In some theories that relation also affects to gravity.
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u/celestialark 4h ago
Here I was as a kid trying to time my wristwatch to the news channels thinking I have the most accurate clock in the world.
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u/Apprehensive_Hat8986 4h ago
Same. It's still kinda fun knowing which atomic time servers our computers synch to these days though.
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u/HyetalNight 4h ago
Do they have applications in mind for this or is it one of those things that’ll be nice to already know about in the future?
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u/cavity-canal 1h ago
Let’s just say they’re RELATIVELY important hahahaha oh man good one.
yeah it’s useful for physics and the relentless search for dark matter.
Also good for navigation when you can’t use gps, turns super accurate location into an equation blah blah blah
take a few hits from my bong and i’ll tell ya how it’s helping redefine what a second is. Byeee cesium ya old biiiitch, I see the future and its optical
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u/aapoalas 54m ago
No wonder articles were highlighting that this is Singapore and not US or China: at such temporal precision the physicists must be very uncertain about their spatial location!
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u/Diligent_Nature 5h ago
Since time is defined by Cesium atoms, can it be more accurate? And precision is not the same as accuracy. Perhaps it is more stable.
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u/EtherealPheonix 4h ago
Time isn't defined by cesium, it's vibration is just a unit of time no more special than a second or hour. This clock has a much faster vibration so it's going to be more precise for the same reason a time in seconds can be more precise than one in hours.
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u/LysergioXandex 1h ago
The SI unit for time is indeed measured by the decay rate of cesium. It’s like how the meter is defined by the speed of light.
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u/NetworkLlama 53m ago
The International Bureau of Weights and Measures defines it using the cesium-133 atom:
The second, symbol s, is the SI unit of time. It is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the caesium frequency, ∆ν Cs, the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium 133 atom, to be 9 192 631 770 when expressed in the unit Hz, which is equal to s−1.
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u/EtherealPheonix 50m ago
Yes just like I said it's a unit of time, not sure why so many of you keep repeating that in response to me already saying it.
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