New Atomic Clock 1000 Times More Accurate

stevelinton writes "The UK National Physical Laboratory has a new atomic clock potentially 1000 times more accurate than current cesium clocks: to within 1 second in about 30 billion years! This could lead quite soon to a new definition of the second, and in a while to improved resolution in GPS successor systems. More interestingly, there are theories that some of the universe's fundamental dimensionless constants may have changed by a parts in a million over the last 10 billion years or so. These clocks are so accurate that they should be able to detect these changes over a year or two."

Comments

It's about time!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Re:Faster Networks?

[ca1v1n]

If you're referring to the quantum effect of coupling, which allows action at a distance for instant communication, I believe that experiments have been able to do it at ranges of a few meters, up to a few seconds after the initial coupling, before it decays. We're still centuries from deploying that technology.

Re:Give or take a year...

[Pinkfud]

The "fundamental constants" have to drift. Here's why: The universe is expanding. We see the constants as "constant" because and only because we are measuring them from within the frame of reference in which they are constant. If an observer could stand outside the universe, he would see the constants change to keep up with the expansion.

Now, if the universal expansion was perfect, the constants would also be perfect over time. But the expansion isn't perfect, so the constants are forced to drift slightly in order to make the parts fit together. Being able to measure that drift is useful in understanding how the universe really works. Relativity - it's a bitch sometimes!