The world’s most accurate clock has won the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics in 2022.
Jun Ye, a physicist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Colorado at Boulder, made a fundamental breakthrough by inventing the optical lattice clock, and he was awarded the prize together with another atomic clock researcher, Hidetoshi Katori of the University of Tokyo.
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atomic clock
Both optical clocks and atomic clocks are very precise. The atomic clock is so precise that it has an error of about one second every 100 million years, compared to one second every two years for a typical quartz clock. On the other hand, Ye’s optical lattice clock has an error of one second every 15 billion years, making it the most accurate clock in the world.
Fifteen billion years is also the approximate age of the universe, so if the Ye clocks were around at the time of the Big Bang, they would be only one second behind the present time. Doubtful? Yes, it is, because the time is not the same as it was at the Big Bang. But it makes sense if you look at clocks from a physical point of view, rather than what we think of as best wall clocks online in pakistan.
Optical clocks
Optical clocks operate at the frequency of light, the frequency of visible light in the electromagnetic spectrum. Atomic clocks, on the other hand, measure the microwave frequencies of atoms. The higher the frequency, the more accurate the timekeeping.
The laser cools the strontium atom to absolute zero and the atom is placed in a laser lattice called an optical lattice (from which the clock gets its name). Currently, the second SI is determined using cesium atoms, but there are plans to replace cesium with strontium to create a new standard.
Having the world’s most accurate time measuring instrument is not only very useful, it also allows scientists to understand fundamental aspects of the universe. Scientists in Ye’s lab have noticed that if the clock is moved even a few centimeters closer to the ground, the time it measures slows down. This is consistent with Einstein’s famous theory of relativity.
Optical lattice clocks
Optical lattice clocks will also have important implications in the field of astrophysics. For example, if the clocks of observatories around the world could be precisely synchronized, we would be able to measure black holes more accurately and thus understand them better. According to Einstein’s theory of relativity, time slows down as we approach massive objects. Small changes in time measured by optical clocks can tell us if there is lava under a solid rock, how much water is under a desert, how deep the ocean is, and so on.
