Making the simplest atomic clock

The watch was created by only one type of atom in the atom that scientists thought was not simpler.

This new time measuring device can also determine the mass. Besides, this success paves the way for researchers to create even more exotic watches in the near future - without using particles or even based on antimatter.

The copper was created only from an atomic particle considered to be the simplest ever.

The simplest clock ever created is atomic clocks, based on how atoms move between two levels of energy. Basically, these watches need at least two particles - atomic nuclei and electrons moving between the energy layers around the nucleus.

Could the clock be simpler than that?

Researchers have questioned and hypothesized about a watch created only by a single particle. Starting with the famous equation of (Einstein) E = mc2 and its consequence is the de Broglie wave hypothesis which shows that the hypothesis can be realized through energy transformation. Thus, a particle of matter can fluctuate as often as a wave, thus acting according to the principle of the clock.

The problem is that the frequency of vibration of a matter particle is too high for anyone to measure it. Again thanks to Einstein's theory of relativity, physicists know that when objects move and return to a fixed position, they will undergo less time than standing objects.

Holger Müller, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, proposed using lasers to separate a particle from cesium atom (Cs 55) into two parts, half moving and turning, the other half remains in place. old.'A little, very little time (1/3 second) has passed when the other half moves, so it fluctuates less than 100,000 of the other half'.

The experiment shows that we can measure time with a single particle, the exact type of atomic clock developed 60 years ago but less than about 1 billion times more accurate than the latest atomic clock. , optical clock.

Holger Müller and colleagues also linked time to the mass of the atom, so time could be used to determine mass. An interesting possibility with this watch version is based on antimatter instead of ordinary matter. Matter and antipathy will explode when exposed to each other and one of the mysteries of the universe is why we have never known antimatter.