There’s a new record holder for the most accurate clock in the world. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have improved their atomic clock based on a trapped aluminum ion. Part of the latest wave of optical atomic clocks, it can perform timekeeping with 19 decimal places of accuracy.

Optical clocks are typically evaluated on two levels—accuracy (how close a clock comes to measuring the ideal “true” time, also known as systematic uncertainty) and stability (how efficiently a clock can measure time, related to statistical uncertainty). This new record in accuracy comes out of 20 years of continuous improvement of the aluminum ion clock.

Beyond its world-best accuracy, 41% greater than the previous record, this new clock is also 2.6 times more stable than any other ion clock. Reaching these levels has meant carefully improving every aspect of the clock, from the laser to the trap and the vacuum chamber.

CBI’s Operation Chakra V dismantles a transnational tech support scam targeting UK, Australia. Over £390,000 lost in UK, two arrests made.

Some interesting research papers that I have read over the past few weeks and would like to share with my community. I’m planning to post regular installments of this here!

Humans have built so many dams around the world that the Earth’s poles have wandered away from the planet’s rotational axis, new research suggests.

Over the last 200 years, humans have constructed nearly 7,000 massive dams, impounding enough water to nudge the Earth’s poles by about three feet (one meter) and cause a 0.83-inch (21-millimeter) drop in global sea levels, according to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters.

This drift is possible because Earth’s solid crust forms a hard shell around a molten layer of gooey magma. This means that whenever a significant amount of mass is redistributed across the planet’s surface, the outermost rock layer wobbles, shifting relative to Earth’s molten interior. When this happens, different areas on the Earth’s surface end up directly over the planet’s rotational axis. As a result, the planet’s poles pass through different surface locations than before, a phenomenon known as true polar wander.

A research team led by the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC) has demonstrated a new induction-based mechanism that enables partial self-recharging in batteries, using a symmetric iron-based configuration as a proof of concept. The study, published in Electrochimica Acta, lays the groundwork for future battery systems that integrate wireless recharging capabilities through induced redox reactions.

Ancient humans in Africa changed their behaviour in a major way 70,000 years ago, which could explain how their descendants managed to people the rest of the world

In his first large-scale public presentation after receiving the Turing Award, Dr. Richard S. Sutton presents, “The Era of Experience & The Age of Design,” r…

“If you pass all the thinking to GenAI, then the result is that the developer isn’t doing any thinking.”