At that level, clocks will be precise enough that they'll have to correct for the relativistic effects of the shape of the earth, which changes every day in reaction to environmental factors. (Some of the research clocks already need to account for changes in the NIST building's size on a hot day.) That's where the work at the Time and Frequency Division begins to overlap with cosmology, astrophysics and space-time.By looking at the things that upset clocks, it's possible to map factors like magnetic fields and gravity variation. "Environmental conditions can make the ticking rate vary slightly," says O'Brian.
That means passing a precise clock over different landscapes yields different gravity offsets, which could be used to map the presence of oil, liquid magma or water underground. NIST, in short, is building the first dowsing rod that works.
clocks
How Super-Precise Atomic Clocks Will Change the World in a Decade
Tags: mad science, space
12 Responses:
God, gravity is so strange. It makes my brain hurt.
The coolest thing is the pocket atomic click that DARPA are funding. Imagine every computer, phone, etc. having a built-in atomic clock...
http://www.symmttm.com/pr_lp/CSAC2/
Imagine a Beow-- uh, never mind.
You sir are fired.
Nifty. But more importantly, no current music? Not even Time? Its ticking clocks haunt me, but that's not really anyone's fault.
And then, DST will fuck everything up.
oops "We thought the earth was going to well up lava.. but we forgot aobut leapseconds"
So... The closer I stand to a clock, the slower it runs due to my personal gravity field?
No wonder Windows takes forever to boot.
9.8m/sec^2 is now irrelevant!
If I start hanging out with more fat people, will that make me float?
but they already do something like that... in Austin I worked at ARL screwing around with databases of gravity information. Oil companies go around measuring gravity variations, trying to find oil, and sell their info to the government, who uses it to better calculate missile trajectories.
this'll probably be more precise or something.
faster to cover large areas; not so sure whether it can be more precise
That's cool, but Hyperspectral MASINT datacubes are almost here, and will probably do it sooner, faster, and on a larger scale.