Researcher Jun Ye and his team have built the world’s most precise atomic clock from his basement lab in Boulder, Colorado. It’s so powerful it can measure otherwise imperceptible changes in the physical world. “Have you ever seen the movie called Interstellar? You’ll see some of that in our lab, it’s not science fiction. You can actually see clocks slow down,” said Ye. Continue reading for another video and more information.
“Optical atomic clocks work by measuring the rate at which the energy level of electrons swirling around an atom’s nucleus changes. The big advancement in Ye’s clock is its laser, which is ultra-stable, giving it it the ability to stay synched up its atoms for longer periods of time. One other major feat of this new atomic clock is that it works at room temperature. Typically, atomic clocks have been cooled to sub-zero temperatures to avoid having heat radiation change the vibration rates of the atoms inside,” reports Splinter News.
