The Nuclear Clock: A New Window on the Fundamental Forces of Nuclei and the Implications for Physicists
This energy shift requiresa slightly higher, ultraviolet frequency, resulting in a faster tick rate that could match or surpass the accuracy of the atomic clock. The combination of stability and precision is the most important potential advantage for the nuclear clock. Particles in the nucleus are less sensitive than electrons to disturbances such as electromagnetic fields — meaning that a nuclear clock could be portable and robust. Anne Curtis said that it becomes sensitive in a way that is kind of unthinkable in how the clock works today.
According to Elina Fuchs, a theoretical physicist at the Leibniz University Hanover, Germany, the tick is already being used in particle physics. And because the clock’s frequency is set by the fundamental forces that hold together the nucleus, the prototype could spot whether a type of dark matter — an invisible substance that accounts for around 85% of material in the Universe — affects these forces on a minuscule scale. “This is a new, direct window onto the nuclear force,” says Fuchs.
A laser device called a Frequency comb gave the breakthrough. The set-up isn’t technically a clock, because it hasn’t been used to measure time. But such impressive results make the development of a nuclear clock seem possible, says Safronova.
Physicists can measure the frequency tick of one clock with another by using the frequency comb, which gives them the ability to know the ratio of a clock’s frequencies. The team’s ability to determine the absolute Frequency value with high precision allowed them to open up some cool possibilities in physics.
A physicist at JILA, Chuankun Zhang says that observing the transition for the first time felt amazing. He says that they spent the entire night doing all the tests to verify if this is actually the signal they were looking for.
Finding the right kind of atomic nucleus to use and the frequencies needed to induce the shift to a different energy state have been a tough job for physicists for 50 years. In the 1970s, indirect evidence suggested that thorium-229 had a bizarrely low-energy nuclear transition2 — one that might eventually be triggered by tabletop lasers. But it wasn’t until last year that scientists discovered the required frequency3 — and this year, they successfully initiated shift with a laser4.
honing is required for the laser system. “Fortunately, this amazing technique has high potential,” says Olga Kocharovskaya, a physicist at Texas A&M University in College Station. It is a type of source that is used in the future clock.
NaturePodcast – Bringing Nature to the CERN Neuroimmunology Workshop – Vol. XXVI. A novel immunotherapy for injured mice using T cells
The floods in Brazil have helped and hindered paleontologists and the science of Artificial Intelligence has aided and hindered them too.
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By harnessing T cells to fine-tune the inflammation response, researchers have limited the damage caused by spinal injury in mice, an approach they hope might one day translate into a human therapy. The effects of injury to the central nervous system can be a combination of good and bad. In this work researchers have identified the specific kind of T cells that amass at the site, and used them to create an immunotherapy that helps the mice recover more quickly from injuries by slowing damage to neurons.
The star that got partially shredded by a black hole twice, and how heatwaves could make bumblebees smell like a tree, were both related to this.
