{"id":201901,"date":"2024-12-19T03:10:44","date_gmt":"2024-12-19T09:10:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/thin-film-tech-makes-nuclear-clocks-a-1000-times-less-radioactive-and-more-affordable"},"modified":"2024-12-19T03:10:44","modified_gmt":"2024-12-19T09:10:44","slug":"thin-film-tech-makes-nuclear-clocks-a-1000-times-less-radioactive-and-more-affordable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/12\/thin-film-tech-makes-nuclear-clocks-a-1000-times-less-radioactive-and-more-affordable","title":{"rendered":"Thin-film tech makes nuclear clocks a 1,000 times less radioactive and more affordable"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/thin-film-tech-makes-nuclear-clocks-a-1000-times-less-radioactive-and-more-affordable.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In the quest for ultra-precise timekeeping, scientists have turned to nuclear clocks. Unlike optical atomic clocks\u2014which rely on electronic transitions\u2014nuclear clocks utilize the energy transitions in the atom\u2019s nucleus, which are less affected by outside forces, meaning this type of clock could potentially keep time more accurately than any previously existing technology.<\/p>\n<p>However, building such a clock has posed major challenges\u2014thorium-229, one of the isotopes used in nuclear clocks, is rare, radioactive, and extremely costly to acquire in the substantial quantities required for this purpose.<\/p>\n<p>Reported in a study <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/s41586-024-08256-5\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in <i><i>Nature<\/i>,<\/i> a team of researchers, led by JILA and NIST Fellow and University of Colorado Boulder Physics professor Jun Ye, in collaboration with Professor Eric Hudson\u2019s team at UCLA\u2019s Department of Physics and Astronomy, have found a way to make nuclear clocks a thousand times less radioactive and more cost-effective, thanks to a method creating thin films of thorium tetrafluoride (ThF<sub>4<\/sub>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the quest for ultra-precise timekeeping, scientists have turned to nuclear clocks. Unlike optical atomic clocks\u2014which rely on electronic transitions\u2014nuclear clocks utilize the energy transitions in the atom\u2019s nucleus, which are less affected by outside forces, meaning this type of clock could potentially keep time more accurately than any previously existing technology. However, building such [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-201901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201901\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}