As thin as a pencil tipScientists at JILA, a joint division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado, have measured the smallest scale of time warp with the world's most accurate clock. techlife/” class=”PfUsGslq” title=”Scientists discover time warp on smallest scale so far” alt=”Scientists find time warp on smallest scale so far” Scientists find time warp on smallest scale so far/
Strong gravitational fields or incredibly high speeds can distort the flow of time. For example, clocks aboard spaceships tick slightly faster than those on Earth, due to the distorting effect of our planet's gravity on time. from each other – about the width of a pencil tip – show slightly different times due to the influence of Earth's gravity.
Yeh and his colleagues at JILA have been developing increasingly accurate atomic clocks for several years. The role of the pendulum in this clock is played by the frequency of oscillations of electrons in atoms, which are carefully arranged in lattices designed to control their chaotic energy and movement. These innovations make this atomic clock the most accurate ever created, measuring only one second in 15 billion years. time at two points with a difference in height of 33 centimeters, which at that time was a great achievement. After a decade of fine-tuning the clock, Yeh and his colleagues were able to track frequency shifts in a sample of 100,000 extremely cold strontium atoms, allowing them to capture the unprecedented effect of time dilation on the millimeter scale.
What's more, the team was able to get these atoms to move in perfect unison for 37 seconds, setting a new record for the duration of “quantum coherence”, or the state in which the behavior of these atoms can be predicted.
Source: Vice