In a cellar lab at the University of Colorado Boulder , research worker have built the reality ’s most precise atomic clock — it can keep perfect time for 5 billion years . But the clock is so precise that it ’s run into a problem . Time does n’t move at the same rate everywhere in the cosmos , or even on the airfoil of Earth .
The clock is a stack to look at , spread out on a large table amid a tangle of cables wrapped in tinfoil and hold together with binder cartridge clip . At the pith of the equipment are strontium atoms , suspended in optical maser beams , which vibrate at a superfast oftenness .
As NPRreports , though , the clock is so sensitive that it presents research worker with an unprecedented problem :
Right now , on the top of Mount Everest , time is perish just a lilliputian snatch faster than it is in Death Valley . That ’s because speed at which time passes reckon on the metier of gravitational attraction . Einstein himself discovered this dependance as part of his theory of relativity , and it is a very material upshot .
The proportional nature of time is n’t just something seen in the extremum . If you take a clock off the story , and hang it on the bulwark , says scientists Jun Ye , “ the prison term will accelerate up by about one part in 10 ^ 16 . ”
That is a sliver of a second . But this is n’t some impression of solemnity on the clock ’s machinery . Time itself is flowing more apace on the paries than on the floor . These difference did n’t really matter until now . But this raw clock is so sensitive , petty changes in height throw it way off . rise it just a couple of centimeters , Ye says , “ and you will start to see that difference . ”
That ’s a problem , because to actually use fourth dimension , you need different clocks to harmonise on the time . consider about it : If I say , “ let ’s play at 3:30 , ” we utilize our watches . But imagine a earthly concern in which your watch starts to tick quicker , because you ’re working on the floor above me . Your 3:30 happens to begin with than mine , and we miss our appointment .
This clock works like that . Tiny shifting in the ground ’s crust can fuddle it off , even when it ’s sitting still . Even if two of them are synchronized , their unlike rates of tick mean they will soon be out of synch . They will never agree .
The reality ’s current sentence is coordinated between atomic clocks all over the planet . But that ca n’t fall out with the new one .
“ At this level , maintaining absolute time scale on land is in fact turn into nightmare , ” Ye says .
But Tom O’Brien , who oversees the U.S.master clockat the National Institute of Standards and Technology , believes this newest genesis of horologe could be “ made into exquisite devices for feel a whole bunch of different things . ” Their sensitivity to gravity , he say , could help scientist represent the inside of our planet or find gravitational undulation from pitch-dark holes .
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