More Precise Nuclear Clock Might Dethrone Atomic Clock

The most accurate clock known to mankind might just get overtaken by Nuclear clock, promising 60 times more accuracy than Atomic clock. Atomic clock has been the standard measure for time for a decent amount of years now, making itself useful from measuring the official length of a second to tracking subatomic particles surpassing the speed of light.

Though a Nuclear clock is not yet in physical existence, the theoretical idea has proved it to be more precise and less prone to errors than the aforementioned, Atomic clock. The concept is to use the atomic nucleus like a tuning fork, where the nucleus oscillates between frequencies only when hit with a specific frequency of light. The particles can then be excited at a formerly decided frequency to produce a highly precise device of measurement.

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While in an atomic clock a similar method is used of measuring the number of vibrations, it can be easily effected by magnetic or electrical forces causing erroneous judgment. Nuclear clocks, which are composed of thorium atoms can be excited with a relatively low energy ultraviolet light, hence making it less prone to external factors that might cause its accuracy to fall.

The most accurate atomic clocks have a record of a drift of 4 seconds since the big bang. That is pretty impressive on the scale but a Nuclear clock beats that.  Corey Campbell at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta and colleagues have devised a scheme such that the Nuclear clock only drifts by one second for a time span of 200 billion years, which according to claims is 14 times the age of the universe.

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