Nuclear Clock: The Ticking Nucleus in the Search for Dark Matter ⚡ экспресс
Original: "A thorium-229 optical nuclear clock with feedback loop"
The first nuclear clock is ticking: instead of electrons, the thorium nucleus does the ticking. This opens the door to hunting dark matter.
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Tucked inside a calcium fluoride crystal the size of a grain of sand is a clock ticking 2,000 trillion times a second. Its 'pendulum'—a thorium-229 nucleus—fears neither shaking nor heat. Such a clock could sniff out the breath of dark matter.
🎯 The transition in the thorium-229 nucleus is the only one in the universe that can be 'caught' with today's laser technology. That's why it was chosen for the first nuclear clock.
\sigma_y(\tau) = 3 \cdot 10^{-12} / \sqrt{\tau}
The longer the clock runs, the more accurate it becomes. After 100 seconds, the accumulated error is just 3×10⁻¹³—that's three parts in ten trillion.