How the world’s most precise clock could transform fundamental physics
- US scientist Jun Ye and his team built a device 50 times more exact than today’s best atomic clocks, paving the way for new discoveries in quantum mechanics
- The breakthrough was achieved by working with webs of light, known as optical lattices, to trap atoms in orderly arrangements
Einstein’s theory of general relativity holds that a massive body like the Earth curves space-time, causing time to slow as you approach the object – so a person on top of a mountain ages a tiny bit faster than someone at sea level.
US scientists have now confirmed the theory at the smallest scale ever, showing that clocks tick at different rates when separated by fractions of a millimetre.
Jun Ye, of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado Boulder, said their new clock was “by far” the most precise ever built – and could pave the way for new discoveries in quantum mechanics, the rule book for the subatomic world.
Ye and colleagues published their findings on Wednesday in the prestigious journal Nature, describing the engineering advances that enabled them to build a device 50 times more precise than today’s best atomic clocks.
It was not until the invention of atomic clocks – which keep time by detecting the transition between two energy states inside an atom exposed to a particular frequency – that scientists could prove Albert Einstein’s 1915 theory.