Proposed Nuclear Clock May Keep Time With the Universe [View all]

[n2doc]

ScienceDaily (Mar. 8, 2012) — 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.

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http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120308101331.htm