• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

We Just Took A Step Closer To Building The First Nuclear Clocks

May 26, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

High-precision measurements of time have the potential to provide a new way to study the universe by testing both quantum mechanics and our theory of gravity. In the last few years, optical clocks have broken record after record, but there is a way to get even more precise and that is to build a nuclear clock. Now, new measurements that have eluded physicists for years have brought us a step closer to one. 

While an atomic clock measures the transitions of excited electrons inside an atom to measure time, a nuclear clock looks for these transitions in an atomic nucleus. This has a few advantages. The nucleus is much smaller than an atom so it is less susceptible to external influences that might affect the number of oscillations. The best optical atomic clocks have a precision of 10−18, so they have an inaccuracy of 1 second every 30 billion years. A nuclear clock would be at least 10 times more precise.

Advertisement

So what are we waiting for? Well, for most atoms nuclear transitions require more energy than the transitions you get with electrons. With our current understanding and technology, there is only one possible element that works: thorium-229.

Exciting this nucleus to its first higher-energy state (also known as its isomer) doesn’t take much energy. When the isomer goes back to being in its ground state it emits a photon, a process known as radiative decay. This photon is key to the nuclear clock setup but researchers had not previously been able to measure this decay – until now.

A team led by Sandro Kraemer at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany measured photons in the ultraviolet with a wavelength of 148 nanometers and a transition energy of 8.338 electronvolts. Typical energies are hundreds if not thousands of times higher than that. This is the most precise measurement of the isomer’s energy, improving the theoretical picture of a nuclear clock.

“We have finally succeeded in observing a clear signature for the radiative decay of the thorium-229 nuclear isomer in our experiments,” co-author Dr Mustapha Laatiaoui, junior research group leader at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, said in a statement. 

Advertisement

“As a result, we have managed to measure its excitation energy with an accuracy improved by a factor of seven than previous results. And on the basis of our measurements, we have even been able to estimate the half-life of the radiative transition, which we put at about 10 minutes.”

The physicists used the ISOLDE facility at CERN. There actinium-229 atoms implanted in a crystal were left to decay and turn into thorium-229. By using a technique called vacuum ultraviolet spectroscopy they were able to determine the properties of this element with the highest precision yet.

“ISOLDE is currently one of only two facilities in the world that can produce actinium-229 isotopes,” Kraemer noted. “By incorporating these isotopes in calcium fluoride or magnesium fluoride crystals, we produced many more isomeric thorium-229 nuclei and increased our chances of observing their radiative decay.”

Thorium-299 encased in a magnesium fluoride crystal had already been considered a potential setting for a nuclear clock. This new study shows that although more work is necessary, it’s a good bet.

Advertisement

The findings were published in the journal Nature.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Canadian PM Trudeau not sorry for snapping at protester who insulted his wife
  2. Cricket-Kohli becomes first Indian to reach 10,000 runs in T20 cricket
  3. Congo’s $6 billion China mining deal ‘unconscionable’, says draft report
  4. Man Waggling His Willy At Leopards Found On World’s Earliest Narrative Art

Source Link: We Just Took A Step Closer To Building The First Nuclear Clocks

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Surströmming: Why Sweden’s Stinky Fermented Fish Smells So Bad (But People Still Eat It)
  • First-Ever Recording Of Black Hole Recoil Captured During Merger – And You Can Listen To It
  • The Moon Is Moving Away From Earth At A Rate Of About 3.8 Centimeters Per Year. Will It Ever Drift Apart?
  • As Solar Storm Hits Earth NASA Finds “The Sun Is Slowly Waking Up”
  • Plate Tectonics And CO2 On Planets Suggest Alien Civilizations “Are Probably Pretty Rare”
  • How To Watch The “Awkward” Partial Solar Eclipse This Weekend
  • World’s Oldest Pots: 20,000-Year-Old Vessels May Have Been Used For Cooking Clams Or Brewing Beer
  • “The Body Is Slowly And Continuously Heated”: 14,000-Year-Old Smoked Mummies Are World’s Oldest
  • Pizza Slices, Polaroid Pictures, And Over 300 Hats: What’s Left Behind In Yellowstone’s Hydrothermal Areas?
  • The Mathematical Paradox That Lets You Create Something From Nothing
  • Ancient Asteroid Ripped Apart In Collision Had Flowing Water
  • Flying Foxes Include The World’s Biggest Bat And The Largest Mammal Capable Of True Flight
  • NASA Responds To Claims That Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Is An Advanced Alien Spacecraft
  • Millions Of Tons Of Gold Are In Earth’s Oceans, Potentially Worth Over $2 Quadrillion
  • The Race Back To The Moon: US Vs China, Will What Happens Next Change The Future?
  • NOAA Issues G3 Geomagnetic Storm Warning As 500,000 Kilometer Hole Sends Solar Wind At Earth
  • Lasting 776 Days, This Is The Longest Case Of COVID-19 Ever Recorded
  • Living Cement: The Microbes In Your Walls Could Power The Future
  • What Can Your Earwax Reveal About Your Health?
  • Ever Seen A Giraffe Use An Inhaler? Now You Can, And It’s Incredibly Wholesome
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version