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The First Nuclear Clock Will Test if Fundamental Constants Change (www.quantamagazine.org)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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An ultra-precise measurement of a transition in the hearts of thorium atoms gives physicists a tool to probe the forces that bind the universe.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 months ago (1 children)

My understanding is that current atomic clocks work on changing the state of whole atoms.

Whereas this new method changes the state of part of the nucleus of an atom.

Basically smaller is more precise. However given that current atomic clocks are one second out over something like a billion years I've no idea what benefit this extra preciseness will give us.

We'll probably start noticing really weird shit when we look at time that precisely. That's generally what's happened when we get into the quantum scale of things.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Yeah the simulation breaks down when you reach quantum scales. The engine will start trying to render things it doesn’t know how to render and things just kind of fall apart (particle-wave duality and all that).

If you stay in the macro scale there are efficient functions that handle the world physics very well.

I’m most impressed with the concurrency of the simulation than anything else. But tbqh it could all be running on a single thread and we probably wouldn’t be able to tell. Again, unless we get to the quantum scales.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

That fact that it could be a simulation hints at the fact that there is an underlying set of rules that could be used to generate that simulation. Those underlying set of rules could also be considered the most fundamental laws that govern the universe.