Strides in Black Body Energy: New Calculations Set the Stage for Ulta-Precise Clocks. - Polidicks

[i]via[/i]: Science Daily. [quote][release]ScienceDaily (May 14, 2011) — A team of physicists from the United States and Russia announced that it has developed a means for computing, with unprecedented accuracy, a tiny, temperature-dependent source of error in atomic clocks. Although small, the correction could represent a big step towards atomic timekeepers' longstanding goal of a clock with a precision equivalent to one second of error every 32 billion years -- longer than the age of the universe.[/release] Precision timekeeping is one of the bedrock technologies of modern science and technology. It underpins precise navigation on Earth and in deep space, synchronization of broadband data streams, precision measurements of motion, forces and fields, and tests of the constancy of the laws of nature over time. "Using our calculations, researchers can account for a subtle effect that is one of the largest contributors to error in modern atomic timekeeping," says lead author Marianna Safronova of the University of Delaware, the first author of the presentation. "We hope that our work will further improve upon what is already the most accurate measurement in science: the frequency of the aluminum quantum-logic clock," adds co-author Charles Clark, a physicist at the Joint Quantum Institute, a collaboration of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Maryland. The paper was presented at the 2011 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics in Baltimore, Md. The team studied an effect that is familiar to anyone who has basked in the warmth of a campfire: heat radiation. Any object at any temperature, whether the walls of a room, a person, the Sun or a hypothetical perfect radiant heat source known as a "black body," emits heat radiation. Even a completely isolated atom senses the temperature of its environment. Just as heat swells the air in a hot-air balloon, so-called "blackbody radiation" (BBR) enlarges the size of the electron clouds within the atom, though to a much lesser degree -- by one part in a hundred trillion, a size that poses a severe challenge to precision measurement. This effect comes into play in the world's most precise atomic clock, recently built by NIST researchers. This quantum-logic clock, based on atomic energy levels in the aluminum ion, Al+, has an uncertainty of 1 second per 3.7 billion years, translating to 1 part in 8.6 x 10-18, due to a number of small effects that shift the actual tick rate of the clock. To correct for the BBR shift, the team used the quantum theory of atomic structure to calculate the BBR shift of the atomic energy levels of the aluminum ion. To gain confidence in their method, they successfully reproduced the energy levels of the aluminum ion, and also compared their results against a predicted BBR shift in a strontium ion clock recently built in the United Kingdom. Their calculation reduces the relative uncertainty due to room-temperature BBR in the aluminum ion to 4 x 10-19, or better than 18 decimal places, and a factor of 7 better than previous BBR calculations. Current aluminum-ion clocks have larger sources of uncertainty than the BBR effect, but next-generation aluminum clocks are expected to greatly reduce those larger uncertainties and benefit substantially from better knowledge of the BBR shift.[/quote] [url=http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110511162528.htm]Source[/url]

read striders and black energy, somehow was not disappointed this is cool

Cool...I guess. A little out of my league, but cool nonetheless.

[QUOTE=sause]32 billion years -- longer than the age of the universe. [/QUOTE] [QUOTE=sause][b]longer than the age of the universe[/b][/QUOTE] I mean, I know that's a long time and all, but who's to say when the universe was [i]actually[/i] created? I mean who the hell knows this information, and where did they even find it lol

[QUOTE=camacazie638;29832501][i]wut[/i][/QUOTE] Well, our solar system anyway. That's pretty much a fact.

[QUOTE=Contag;29832513]Well, our solar system anyway. That's pretty much a fact.[/QUOTE] Anyone of our planets could have been in a whole other system way before ours. > some shit happens, > knocks out of its normal orbit, > then finally comes peacefully into ours, > and then turns into the shitty and hot rock we all call Mercury. Not saying that [i]did[/i] happen, but the concept towards any of our other planets, even ours, could of happened.

[QUOTE=camacazie638;29832501]I mean, I know that's a long time and all, but who's to say when the universe was [i]actually[/i] created? I mean who the hell knows this information, and where did they even find it lol[/QUOTE] By using astrophysics and the movement of things like galaxies you can extrapolate when the big bang was theorised to have occured.

[QUOTE=camacazie638;29832501]I mean, I know that's a long time and all, but who's to say when the universe was [i]actually[/i] created? I mean who the hell knows this information, and where did they even find it lol[/QUOTE] Big Bang theory dude, go and learn about it.

Read title as "Ultra-Precise Cocks" Probably because of the black-bodies part.

[QUOTE=camacazie638;29832669]Anyone of our planets could have been in a whole other system way before ours. > some shit happens, > knocks out of its normal orbit, > then finally comes peacefully into ours, > and then turns into the shitty and hot rock we all call Mercury. Not saying that [i]did[/i] happen, but the concept towards any of our other planets, even ours, could of happened.[/QUOTE] Actually from spectroscopic analysis it's pretty easy to tell that all our planets in our solar system share a common origin from the same disk of debris and dust that formed our sun.

[QUOTE=bravehat;29832936]Actually from spectroscopic analysis it's pretty easy to tell that all our planets in our solar system share a common origin from the same disk of debris and dust that formed our sun.[/QUOTE] no who is to say the dust didnt come from somewhere else like dust land

[QUOTE=Collin665;29833832]no who is to say the dust didnt come from somewhere else like dust land[/QUOTE] Me. And i'm the lord almighty. [editline]15th May 2011[/editline] Plus the fucking dust already migrated from the magic dustlands we call Nebula and then started forming.

[QUOTE=bravehat;29833848]Me. And i'm the lord almighty. [editline]15th May 2011[/editline] Plus the fucking dust already migrated from the magic dustlands we call Nebula and then started forming.[/QUOTE] ok thx so im rite

Well I'm not going to say I know everything about the universe and/or how it works, I just find the idea of it having a specific numbered date/time that the universe has been 'alive' hard to understand, at least currently. We know nothing about the universe before the big bang, and even that is still a theory. Not that I want to disprove anything or anyone, I just find that statement they made a little exaggerated.

[QUOTE=camacazie638;29833913]Well I'm not going to say I know everything about the universe and/or how it works, I just see the idea of it having a specific numbered date/time that the universe has been 'alive', at least us knowing it currently. Maybe as a theory sure, but a straight fact? We know nothing about the universe before the big bang, and even that is still a theory. Not that I want to disprove anything or anyone, I just find that statement they made a little exaggerated.[/QUOTE] Do you have any idea what theory means? Since you throw the term around like everyone else I'll assume no, so I'll inform you. Theory: A scientific theory is an idea/process/experimental construct/argument with evidence to lend weight to it. Now, the big bang theory, that has so much evidence backing it up it's drowning in it, in fact it's drowning so badly that it spends it's days crying "please stop I can't take any more of this" Universal expansion, The Last Scattering Surface and the CMBR are the three major points that point to the Big Bang being correct, and by the very nature of the big bang and our current universe, the big bang was our universe point of origin as before that there was a completely different collection of laws of nature governing interactions, instead of having the 4 fundamental forces we have now back then there was 1 unified force. So yeah dude, you're talking out of your ass, we have a pretty god damned good idea about what was happening back then.

[QUOTE=bravehat;29833964]Do you have any idea what theory means? Since you throw the term around like everyone else I'll assume no, so I'll inform you. Theory: A scientific theory is an idea/process/experimental construct/argument with evidence to lend weight to it. Now, the big bang theory, that has so much evidence backing it up it's drowning in it, in fact it's drowning so badly that it spends it's days crying "please stop I can't take any more of this" Universal expansion, The Last Scattering Surface and the CMBR are the three major points that point to the Big Bang being correct, and by the very nature of the big bang and our current universe, the big bang was our universe point of origin as before that there was a completely different collection of laws of nature governing interactions, instead of having the 4 fundamental forces we have now back then there was 1 unified force. So yeah dude, you're talking out of your ass, we have a pretty god damned good idea about what was happening back then.[/QUOTE] Damn brah, didn't know I was talking out of my own ass, but you do seem pretty sure of it. And I'm cool with the evidence and all the people who put effort into the research, [i]again[/i], I just find it hard for this whole universe, as an entity, having what you could call a "birthday". And I find it even harder to believe we, as intelligent as we might be as humans, know this certain date.

[QUOTE=camacazie638;29832501]I mean, I know that's a long time and all, but who's to say when the universe was [i]actually[/i] created? I mean who the hell knows this information, and where did they even find it lol[/QUOTE] By measuring the universe's background radiation or something.

[QUOTE=camacazie638;29834112]Damn brah, didn't know I was talking out of my own ass, but you do seem pretty sure of it. And I'm cool with the evidence and all the people who put effort into the research, [i]again[/i], I just find it hard for this whole universe, as an entity, having what you could call a "birthday". And I find it even harder to believe we, as intelligent as we might be as humans, know this certain date.[/QUOTE] You talki like the universe is alive, it's not, it's an artefact of interactions, it's here by sheer chance, as are we, and we know about it pretty well thanks to the CMBR and the Last Scattering Surface. We also know the rough size as well if I remember correctly, thanks to the LSS

Learn something new everyday, thanks to Facepunch.

[QUOTE=camacazie638;29832501]I mean, I know that's a long time and all, but who's to say when the universe was [i]actually[/i] created? I mean who the hell knows this information, and where did they even find it lol[/QUOTE] Well if the universe had been around forever we wouldn't be here right now. The second law of thermodynamics states that in any closed system disorder increases, and if something has been around forever it would have reached a state of 100% disorder infinitely long ago.

[QUOTE=sltungle;29859964]Well if the universe had been around forever we wouldn't be here right now. The second law of thermodynamics states that in any closed system disorder increases, and if something has been around forever it would have reached a state of 100% disorder infinitely long ago.[/QUOTE] That's what people in the 18th century were prognosing. They called it the entropy-death. Luckily someone noticed that gravity is also alive and kicking.

[QUOTE=Killuah;29860279]That's what people in the 18th century were prognosing. They called it the entropy-death. Luckily someone noticed that gravity is also alive and kicking.[/QUOTE] Entropy will ALWAYS win in the end, though. Gravity isn't some kind of 'fix-it' for the second law of thermodynamics. Eventually all of the stars would fizzle out and die, black holes would eat up everything in the entire universe, and they themselves would eventually evaporate into radiation. If the universe was infinitely old, that would have happened an infinitely long period of time ago.