As good as this atomic clock is in just a few years we should have something even more accurate, more accurate than any atomic clock, a nuclear clock; they don't work by emitting light caused by the different energy levels of electrons in an atom but instead emits electromagnetic waves based on the different energy levels of the particles in the atomic nucleus. Normally any light coming from the nucleus is of such a high frequency that with existing technology there's no way to use it as a clock, however there is a nuclear isomer of the isotope Thorium-229 it has a very unusual energy transition level that is much lower than that of any other, it's only about 8 electron volts, which corresponds to a wavelength of about 132 nanometer (that's in the far ultraviolet range). It would be difficult, but certainly not impossible, to make a laser that produces light of that wavelength, and it could be used to prompt an energy jump in the nucleus to make a nuclear clock out of it.
The thorium-229 low-energy isomer and the nuclear clock <https://www.nature.com/articles/s42254-021-00286-6> Nuclear clocks could outdo atomic clocks as the most precise timepieces <https://www.sciencenews.org/article/nuclear-clock-atomic-most-precise-time-physics> John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis> qq99 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3%3D82B5vV6ykDxeiBRuhqxwdSEewQXMy59bsTAA5a5UWA%40mail.gmail.com.
