This 14-billion-year-old atomic clock deviates from 1 second will help us understand the nature of the Universe

Physicist Jun Ye is the one who created the most accurate watch in the world. With it, we will neutralize the secret of nature.

The question Jun Ye encountered most often throughout his career in scientific research until now: Why should the most accurate watch in the world be created? Most of us live hour by minute without absolute precision, so we don't understand why it is worth dividing time into small units.

But at the University of Colorado, the physics professor has a different view of time, a little different than us. According to Professor Ye, time is not only a constant that determines everything we do, but also a key factor in understanding the nature of the universe, how things work.

You can imagine life as a great equation, to solve the equation, we need constants. Where to find constants? Thanks to science, we have a number of particles in a substance, their atomic number, . One of them, we have a constant constant of time.

The path of the Sun allows the ancient Egyptians to set a schedule of time, the gravity of the impact on the pendulum clock will give the seafighter a precise pathfinder, vibrating in the field. Quartz watches give us an accurate time measurement tool on the wrist. Time measurement has always been a central element, playing a big role in the development of humanity. The way we measure time varies a lot, much more modern and more accurate.

When the accuracy is high, the scientific community discovered that natural time measurement elements are not perfect and inconsistent. They want an accurate clock mechanism, never slow or if there is a delay, it doesn't have to be reset manually often.

The exact clock search has brought physicists to atoms: they have a regular rhythm mechanism, the nature of atoms is so they will be a metronome, timing mechanism. extremely accurate. In each atom are smaller particles, arranged in the same order as small star systems: protons and neutrons are central stars, electrons are planets orbiting them. In the tiny atomic world, they follow a rule of their own: quantum physics.

Electrons can jump from one orbit to another, and each time they jump, they create microwave radiation that changes in different energy states. Every time I jump back and forth is supposed to be a beat, based on that, we have an accurate watch.

Two physicists Louis Essen and Jack Parry figured out how to use cesium atoms to create graves in the first atomic clocks. That patent, they redefine time, literally. One second is confirmed as the transfer frequency of 133 cesium atoms, approximately 9.2 rounds.

After several years of research, scientists found many ways to apply cesium atoms. They can use microwaves to fire at atoms, giving it a certain frequency to bring the atom to a higher energy form. The new generation of atomic clocks with new cesium particles shows high stability, with a small number of errors - the clock is getting more accurate.

Professor Ye not only studied the time to understand more about it, it seemed that time also chose Mr. Ye, so that he could appear at the right time so that he could be passionate about physics, fall in love with time and then embark on Research, desire to create accurate time measuring instrument.

He has two favorite areas, or career options to pursue literature and technical science. Shortly after he chose science as a bus stop, he was sent to attend a national physics competition. That honor made him decide to devote his life to science, aiming to become a physicist.

Once again he made the decision at the right time: He delved into research at a time when eminent physicists figured out how to create more accurate atomic clocks. Previous clock versions rely on turning ultra-fast microwave radiation of atoms into slower radio waves, allowing electronic devices to read more easily.

When Ye became a physicist for the National Institute of Physical and Technological Standards and at the same time, becoming an assistant professor at the University of Colorado in 1999, Ye was ready to replace the home position. The great physics and mentor who led him was John Hall. But at that time, Professor Hall and his partner Theodor Hänsch from the Max-Planck Institute for Quantum Optics were prepared to complete a breakthrough.

At the turn of the century, they invented an optical frequency filter, a time-measuring ruler made from the frequency of the laser's light. A few years after the breakthrough, both scientists retired. They left a huge legacy: the current researchers were able to read the frequency of the atomic oscillations at a much higher level, reaching a milestone of between 430 and 770 trillion hertz (for comparison, one the pendulum clock has only 1 hertz beat).

Mr. Ye described Hall and Hänsch's equipment as a new foundation brick for the whole industry, opening up a new range to explore. The household described the optical frequency filter with the mind of an adventurer who had just found the promised land.

Not long after, he achieved his own breakthrough. He successfully developed an atomic clock made of strontium 87, which has a femtosecond-beat rate - one-millionth of a second. The latest version of the watch has thousands of supercooled strontium atomic particles, which lie in a three-dimensional grid. Using a laser to change the particle frequency, they caused the atoms to vibrate and with optical frequency filters, they read each pulse of the particle.

This is the most accurate clock in the world. If it runs from the time of the Big Bang - the giant explosion that spawned the Universe 14 billion years ago - now, it will only deviate by 1 second. Mr. Ye is proud of his accomplishments, and is grateful to those who went ahead for creating a solid foundation, allowing him to build the most accurate human time measuring device ever.

He explained to those who did not understand the importance of the atomic clock: like the old people knew how to use the Sun clock to plant, harvest at the right time, the effect of the atomic clock was in every day human activity.

For example, we have a GPS navigation system. You know the exact way from the house to the market is (in part) by an atomic clock. GPS devices work by accurately calculating the time it takes for satellite signals to go to the device. Any small mistake will make you stray to your ex-lover's house. The 1 millisecond error, multiplied by the distance between the satellite and the device, will turn into a distance of 300 kilometers.

Besides, he also sees the great scientific value of a watch that is super accurate."Measurement is always the focus of science, through which we can neutralize the secret of nature."

The atomic clock system will allow scientists to figure out how the mechanism of quantum physics works, how particles interact and how to connect quantum physics to classical physics. we still see everyday. The bridge connecting the two physical aspects remains the lifelong goal of many scientists.

Understanding quantum physics - how particles interact and why, we will build large systems (which follow basic physics) that work with quantum physics. Quantum computers are one of them.

Professor Ye thinks that if we make a clock that is accurate enough to count the time-varying rhythm in the space around a single particle, we will be able to answer the nature of quantum physics. Taking one step further from the "if" word, we will measure how matter particles attract each other, gravity will open a new page, with accurate measurements at the atomic level. All elements are related to each other, understand how they relate, we will know in advance the natural events that will take place (earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, .), at at the time it was rekindled.

The deeper we explore the time in the atomic world, the more we find possibilities seem endless. Ye also thinks so. He did not believe he had reached the limit, and did not believe everything had stopped there."My desire is to grow stronger, especially through what I have seen over the past 10 and 15 years. These outstanding developments will make the community more confident, ask deeper questions."

The day mankind has a pendulum clock, we have transcended the clear ocean. Once we have an atomic clock, we have a GPS navigation system, which has a global Internet connection. It is hard to imagine the next breakthrough, but everyone wants to imagine, want to live that moment.

As Mr. Ye described, by every scientific step, we were standing in front of a valley full of beautiful flowers. The thing to do is gently remove them, creating new wonders of humanity.