The world's most accurate clocks got
even more accurate just a few years back, but now a team from the University of Nevada in Reno is looking to make the atomic clock way, way smaller. Housed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder, Colorado, these so-called "fountain clocks" send out clouds of caesium atoms through a vacuum chamber in a magnetic field; from there, microwaves in the chamber excite the atoms and then emit light as they drop to a lower hyperfine state. All that rocket science aside, the real point here is that all that magic requires a chassis about the size of a modern day refrigerator. Andrei Derevianko and Kyle Beloy have conjured up the idea of "trapping atoms in place using lasers," which would obviously require far less space for the time telling to happen. Just think -- a chicken in every pot and an atomic clock on every wrist.
[Image courtesy of
PSU]
posted Mar 15th 2009 2:35PM
Everything works better with lazers.
Especially American Gladiator.
You can zay that again!
Yeah, this the second Engadget article today with lasers. They're obviously the future.
and all this time I thought Plasma was the future... silly me
Don't you mean... FRIGGIN' lasers?
Don't you mean fricken?
I say tomata you say tomato.
alll wrong !!! FREAKIN'
GAHHH losers :P
I say Frak your lazers!
so are lasers the new duct tape?
Gaff tape is the new duck tape.
Try it out.
Gaff tape's been around a while. and its FRIGGIN expensive. but awesome nonetheless.
you'd think that with all this technology, they would be able to build a machine that doesn't have wires sticking out everywhere...
All the research labs in college look like this. That is how you know they are on to something..
You should see my desk.
This reminds me of the time I invented a DEATH CLOCK.
Good news, everyone?
Okay, we get it engadget. You loves lasers. And Macs. I'll let you choose which one you love more.
Introducing the new iMac, we replaced the iSight with a small laser.
Enjoy.
An Apple product with lasers would warrant an individual article for each time they interacted with the device, just to tell us how much they love it.
Yea, like a DVD drive.
@KarlW- your comment is either sarcasm in that most Apple computers have optical drives, or a burn on the Air... I can't decide.
I think of it more as a sniper sight.
pity there aren't any blue lasers in any mac products.....
IS this end of wires?!?! NOOOOO!
PEW PEW PEW
Ill have an atomic clock and still Ill be late for everything........
Oh look... An oscilloscope!
Nice build, need to work on cable management though.
Does it trap mice in addition to atoms?
I seem to remember an article on Engadget (or maybe "that other blog") at least a year ago which reported on a device about the size of a grain of rice, which could give us hyperaccurate watches. Although not accurate to the same degree as an atomic clock, it was accurate to something like 1 second every 400 years, and even worked using similar principles as an atomic clock. Is this just more of the same, and what happened to the development from that original article?
Oh yeah that's really useful...
rocket science? more like quantum science....
bad joke?
If it didn't came from big bang theory, proly
Trapping atoms with lasers isn't a new idea. =p
Oh-wow- timeliness is perfect. Darren is my new favorite Engadget writer. The "chicken in every pot" reference to Herbert Hoover's famous depression-era remark is simply golden. Hoover was last in the line of the old Republicans. We have the Democrats to replace them now, and in-fact we have our own Hoover now- who will not let any crisis go to waste in changing our government from a slightly battered and already recovering capitalist republican democracy that has created more personal wealth and been a better steward of good in the world than any single entity whatsoever since time immemorial) to a completely dysfunctional, infinitely indebted, socialist would-be-utopia where we all will become progressively more dependent on the government until we fail to function except through the held-out wide-eyed hopes that our saviors Obama, Reid and Pelosi will just be re-elected one... more... time.... (or any other socialist will do).
Oh sorry, I forgot this was engadget for a minute.
rofl
Well they better hurry..we're almost out of time! yuk .snort..yuk
... Why?
The Atomic and Cesium clocks are for guidence (GPS, ect..). Longitude, latitude, and distance are all time references. When I was in the USAF 20 years ago I used to work on Cesium time clocks. The accuracy of time is very important...
New lazer slogans:
IMMA CHARGEN MAH LAZER?
Lazers...Is there any thing they CAN'T do?
Atomi
Clock