Slashdot Mirror

jones_supa writes that on Tuesday, 26th January, Aalto University's Metsähovi observatory located in Kirkkonummi, Finland, detected a rare anomaly in time reported by the GPS system (Google translation). The automatic monitoring system of a hydrogen maser atomic clock triggered an alarm which reported a deviation of 13.7 microseconds. While this is tiny, it is a sign of a problem somewhere, and does not exclude the possibility of larger timekeeping problems happening. The specific source of the problem is not known, but candidates are a faulty GPS satellite or an atomic clock placed in one. Particle flare-up from sun is unlikely, as the observatory has currently not detected unusually high activity from sun.

jones_supa writes that on Tuesday, 26th January, Aalto University's Metsähovi observatory located in Kirkkonummi, Finland, detected a rare anomaly in time reported by the GPS system (Google translation). The automatic monitoring system of a hydrogen maser atomic clock triggered an alarm which reported a deviation of 13.7 microseconds. While this is tiny, it is a sign of a problem somewhere, and does not exclude the possibility of larger timekeeping problems happening. The specific source of the problem is not known, but candidates are a faulty GPS satellite or an atomic clock placed in one. Particle flare-up from sun is unlikely, as the observatory has currently not detected unusually high activity from sun.

New submitter Kekke writes with news that researchers from Amherst College and Aalto University have figured out a way to create knotted solitary waves in a quantum-mechanical field. They call their creation "quantum knots". Professor David Hall said, "First we cooled a gas of rubidium atoms down to billionths of a degree above zero, at which point it became a superfluid—a tiny, well-ordered environment in which these particle-like objects can exist. Then we exposed the superfluid to a rapid change of a specifically tailored magnetic field, which tied the knot in less than a thousandth of a second." Research group leader Mikko Möttönen added, "For decades, physicists have been theoretically predicting that it should be possible to have knots in quantum fields, but nobody else has been able to make one. Now that we have seen these exotic beasts, we are really excited to study their peculiar properties."