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A strontium optical clock produces about 50,000 times more oscillations per second than a cesium clock, the basis for the current definition of a second.

Advances in atomic clocks may lead to a redefinition of the second, replacing the caesium standard (recent work on thorium nuclear transitions is still a long way from taking that role).

Also, NIST uses egg incubators(!) to control temperature & humidity.

New atomic clocks are more accurate than those used to define the second, suggesting the definition might need to change.

Continue reading “World’s Most Accurate Clocks Could Redefine Time” | >

A long-lost cosmic explosion, buried within two decades of NASA

NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, is the United States government agency responsible for the nation’s civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research. Established in 1958 by the National Aeronautics and Space Act, NASA has led the U.S. in space exploration efforts, including the Apollo moon-landing missions, the Skylab space station, and the Space Shuttle program.

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What if time is not as set in stone it seems? Imagine that time could move forward or backward due to quantum-level processes rather than in a single direction. According to a recent study published in Scientific Reports, researchers at the University of Surrey have uncovered the intriguing discovery that some quantum systems have the potential to produce competing arrows of time.

Image Credit: amgun/Shutterstock.com

The arrow of time—the notion that time moves irrevocably from the past to the future—has baffled scholars for ages. The fundamental principles of physics do not favor one path over another, even though this appears to be evident in the reality humans experience. The equations are the same whether time goes forward or backward.

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Researchers at UC Santa Barbara and TU Dresden are pioneering a new approach to robotics by creating a collective of small robots that function like a smart material.

According to Matthew Devlin, a former doctoral researcher in the lab of UCSB mechanical engineering professor Elliot Hawkes and lead author of a paper published in Science, researchers have developed a method for robots to behave more like a material.

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Searching for life in alien oceans may be more difficult than scientists previously thought, even when we can sample these extraterrestrial waters directly.

A new study focusing on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn that sprays its ocean water into space through cracks in its icy surface, shows that the physics of alien oceans could prevent evidence of deep-sea life from reaching places where we can detect it.

Published today (Thursday, 6 February 2025) in Communications Earth and Environment, the study shows how Enceladus’s ocean forms distinct layers that dramatically slow the movement of material from the ocean floor to the surface.

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