Sentence examples for optical clocks from inspiring English sources

Today's optical clocks will necessitate a new, third definition of the second, based on laser frequencies and, potentially, an element other than cesium.

Optical clocks and constants.

Precise measurements of the frequency ratio of two optical clocks indicate that the fine-structure constant is fine and constant to an uncertainty of 10-17.

Because they're based on higher frequency visible light waves rather than microwave radiation, optical clocks are an order of magnitude more accurate than previous instruments.

In 2002, expect an increasing pace of research as optical clocks become the gold standards by which to judge other important measurements.

Christophe Salomon, a physicist at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris also thinks that's likely but notes the optical clocks aren't quite mature technologically.

"This has been the longstanding problem of trying to make an optical clock".

A recent test by the National Institute of Standards and Technology demonstrated an optical clock, running on the rare-earth metal ytterbium, that breaks every second into more than five hundred trillion intervals.

Unlike caesium clocks, whose atomic metronomes oscillate in the microwave range and which have become the standard for precision timekeeping necessary for such things as satellite navigation, Dr Wineland's optical clock ticks at the higher frequency of visible light.

A new optical clock based on aluminum ions that emit visible light is about 10 times better than the cesium clock, Dr. Wineland said, and would be off by only five seconds over the whole course of cosmic time — 13.7 billion years.

An ytterbium-based optical clock exhibits a precision of nearly one part per quintillion.