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Government Funded Atomic Clock On a Chip
An anonymous reader writes "Today most applications that require accurate atomic clock readings — from sorting separately routed telecommunications packets to timing simultaneous demolition charges — usually refer to signals from global positioning systems (GPS). For applications where GPS is unavailable, such as indoors, underground, undersea or on the battlefield where electronic jamming is present, large, heavy, power hungry hardware atomic clocks were needed. Now an atomic clock-on-a-chip is available that is the result of 10 years of government-funded research and development. The chip is not cheap — $1,500 — but it costs less than conventional atomic clocks and the price is sure to go down as manufacturing gears up to meet demand from military applications."
From TFA:
But it's ATOMIC!
I can think of two to uses off the top of my head. The first is for really fast frequency hopping radios. The rate at which they can hop from one to the next has got to be in some measure limited to how accurate the clock they use is.
And the next one would be improved navigation. You could use these with ground stations and provide extremely accurate navigation and you could use more powerful transmitters so they would be harder to jam.
Now if they could uses these to put a time signature on every radio, tv, and cell tower You could improve navigation in areas where GPS doesn't work so well. Like in buildings. cites with lots of tall buildings, or areas with lots of tree cover.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I didn't even notice that he mentioned smoke detectors. And, nah, I'm pretty sure he's legitimately nuts.
Umm, not all smoke detectors are of the electrostatic variety. There are types that use an IR laser to check for particulates and smoke based on occlusion.
Also, for some fun facts, see The XKCD Radiation Dosage Chart! If you worry about smoke detectors, you'll be surprised at how much radiation you get from living in a brick house...
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
This orange represents your head. This tinfoil represents... well, tinfoil. This microwave represents... well, just watch.
Yes, you can use OCXOs, but they aren't technically atomic clocks. Further, an OCXO (like the one you showed) requires 1.5W, which doesn't sound like much, but the unit linked to above needs only 100mW. A true atomic clock (a rubidium oscillator, for example) is significantly larger than this unit and also draws much more power (11W, steady state).
All things told, though, a OCXO or rubidium frequency standard from eBay should be good enough for most users.
(1) most atomic clocks don't use anything radioactive, they use vibrations of cesium atoms. Given how up tight you are, something that vibrates might be useful to you.
(2) don't eat bananas.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
"The secret to the new atomic clock on a chip is a solid-state laser illuminating a tiny container holding normal non-radioactive cesium vapor."
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Here's the press release http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/miniclock.cfm http://tf.nist.gov/ofm/smallclock/CSAC.html The 2011 version is comparatively huge -- http://www.smartertechnology.com/images/stories/rcjAtomicClockChip.jpg http://tf.nist.gov/ofm/smallclock/CSAC_files/shapeimage_6.png
Atomic == Nuclear
Be afraid of it !!
The chip from the article is ~100x more accurate and consumes 1/10th the power and is similar size of smaller for ~75x the price.
Pretty big leap if you ask me, and I know lots of people that will be looking to utilize these. I expect in the near future that the pricing will drop significantly, since that pricing was just for the initial batch run.
Symmetricon has been buying up all the other precision clock makers, and is now a monopoly. They can and do charge whatever they like for such products.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
Only if the entire headline is simply a noun phrase: an atomic clock (on a chip) that is government-funded.
If, on the other hand, the headline is saying that the government funded the development of an atomic clock (on a chip), then the lack of hyphen is acceptable.
Both are acceptable, since in order to produce a government-funded clock, at some point, the government must have funded the clock.
So the laser simply asks the cesium what time it is.
...millions of times per second. Sort of like the world's most annoying child:
"What time is it? Are we there yet? What time is it?"
As for time dilation of any kind, there are maybe five people (all of them Doctors of some sort) who care in anything other than a merit-badge sort of way.
Who's one of them?
Hyperbole: I use it liberally!
I've designed kit with atomic clocks for undersea use, and specified where to procure them from. At the time (over a decade ago) rubidium clocks could be imported from Switzerland for between £1000 and £2000 with a choice of outputs (square, sine, frequency, amplitude...). They were the size of approx two Nintendo DSs on top of each other. Power consumption wasn't that bad.
Given how long ago that was, I imagine things have improved significantly in terms of form factor and power consumption since then.
So I'm not convinced on the headline assertions about how massive they are and the huge amount of power they draw :)
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
Inertial navigation needs that sort of accuracy. Low-drift, high-resolution laser gyros are IIRC as good as and no better than their time bases are. Drift in reference frequency causes changes in gain...
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.