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Atomic nucleus excited with laser: A breakthrough after decades
- rbanffy 3y agoProfessor Thorsten discovering a mystery of Thorium... How appropriate. Thor must be proud.
- v3ss0n 3y agoOdin must be proud.
- B1FF_PSUVM 3y agoThis is where I slip in my recommendation of the little book titled Votan, by John James.
- galangalalgol 3y agoAlso, it was submitted on the 18th, which was a Thorsday...
- vldr 3y agozerogpt.com is 100% sure the first paragraph is GPT written.
- danans 3y ago> This makes it possible to combine two areas of physics that previously had little to do with each other: classical quantum physics and nuclear physics. Is quantum physics now considered part of classical physics? If so then man, time flies!
- dxuh 3y agoThere is a big difference between "classical" quantum mechanics (about 100 years old now!) and quantum field theory (~50 years old). Maybe that's what they mean?
- snthpy 3y agoWhen I was at university about 25 years ago, QM was about electron transition energies, with QED being a refinement of that for things like fine structure. In experimental HEP you had QCD and quark gluon plasma which informs things like the LHC experiments at CERN. IIRC nuclear physics was largely phenomenological with a lot of observations that had simple models fit to them without being able to reduce those to the particle physics models. This might be about establishing a link between the phenomenological nuclear models and the fundamental QM models.
- scotty79 3y agoI think they want to convey that nucleus is a really weird place so quantum physics of everything else is classical by comparison.
- emblaegh 3y agoClassical there is used in the sense of “non relativistic”.
- denton-scratch 3y agoI thought relativistic quantum physics was not a thing (yet).
- itishappy 3y agoNope, it's a thing! The Dirac Equation is one example. It explains the Pauli exclusion principle and predicts anti-matter. > It is consistent with both the principles of quantum mechanics and the theory of special relativity, and was the first theory to account fully for special relativity in the context of quantum mechanics. What we don't have is a grand unified theory (a single set of rules that generates both theories), but we can consider relativistic effects in QM theories, and (I assume) vice versa. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_equation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirac_equation
- omnicognate 3y agoSpecial vs general. Quantum field theory is special relativistic and quantum mechanical. The grand unified theory stuff is about uniting general relativity and quantum mechanics.
- nathan_compton 3y agoThe body of work called quantum field theory is a theory of relativistic quantum mechanics although many aspects of its foundations are difficult to pin down, its a very powerful and useful apparatus.
- JanisErdmanis 3y agoWe currently don’t know how to calculate the nucleus’s bound state despite a thorough understanding of individual pieces that make it together, as explored in colliders like CERN and others. The problem is similar to telling at what temperature water is boiling, freezing, and its density from knowing the properties of a single water molecule. We understand quantum mechanics and Columb forces govern the properties; it is incredibly hard to renormalise the system from an energy scale of a gas to a liquid or solid. Similarly, it is for a quark-gluon plasma; thus, phenomenological models are used, like how the nuclear potential could look and the masses for different combinations of nuclei.
- tlb 3y agoFrom the paper, the light is UV-C at around 140nm or 8.4 eV. But it has to be very precisely the right energy to cause the transition, since nuclear states don’t have any place to dump excess energy to.
- jhart99 3y agoAhhh thank you! I was wondering why the energy had to be so precise. That makes a ton of sense why it has to be so accurate. What makes this transition so low energy? The only other atomic excited state I have any knowledge of is the iron excited state used in Mossbauer spectroscopy. That transition is much higher energy. Also that one has some coupling to the electronic state of the nucleus. Does this Thorium transition have some special reason that it isn't coupled to the electronic state?
- adrian_b 3y agoThe radiation emitted when nuclei transition between their internal energy levels is known as gamma rays. The gamma rays normally have energies per photon many orders of magnitude greater than for visible light and also much greater than for X-rays (which are produced by electrons accelerated by very high voltages when hitting a target). The thorium 229 nucleus is the only one that can emit gamma rays that are so low in energy that their energy is not only lower than for X-rays, but it is also lower than for many sources of ultraviolet light. For instance the ultraviolet light used in state-of-the-art lithography for semiconductor manufacturing has much higher frequency (shorter wavelength), by about ten times. These gamma rays of the Th229 have a wavelength that is not much shorter than the 184-nm ultraviolet light that can be obtained with a mercury-vapor lamp. What is important is that for such a frequency/wavelength it is possible to build laser sources, which enables the design of an atomic clock that will use thorium 229 nuclei instead of neutral atoms or ions of other elements (like ytterbium, lutetium, strontium, aluminum).
- bawana 3y agoArent gamma, x, and uv ALL em radiation? What makes a gamma with a wavelength near uv still allow it to be called gamma? Why dont we say the nucleon emits uv at 148 when it transitions to its ground state?
- fsh 3y agoThe measurement was already confirmed by a different group: https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.12311 https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.12311 This is important since impurities in the crystals used lead to all kinds of fluorescence that could be mistaken for a signal from the Thorium ions. Now two groups have seen exactly the same signal in different Thorium-doped crystals which is very covincing that they have found the actual nuclear transition.
- dguest 3y agoI went looking for an arXiv link for this paper and found the one you linked. Kind of weird that this new paper is only on the group's website [1] and not on the arXiv. [1]: https://www.tuwien.at/fileadmin/Assets/tu-wien/News/2024/Thorium_Preprint.pdf https://www.tuwien.at/fileadmin/Assets/tu-wien/News/2024/Tho...
- data_maan 3y agoWho will claim priority now?
- jahnu 3y agoAs I understand it, that is not an independent discovery but rather replication/confirmation of the results described in the original 14th of March paper by PTB & TU Wien.
- tromp 3y agoI find it satisfying to see a researcher called THORsten SchUMm devoting his research to THORiUM.
- cantrevealname 3y ago> If the wavelength of the laser is chosen exactly right ... then maybe a special atomic nucleus could be manipulated with a laser, namely thorium-229. On November 21, 2023, the team was finally successful: the correct energy of the thorium transition was hit exactly, the thorium nuclei delivered a clear signal for the first time. So what's the wavelength? I felt like the article left me hanging. The answer is: 148.3821 nm Yes, I admit that it's meaningless to me. It's sort of like a big news story announcing that Malaysia Airlines MH-370 has been located somewhere in the world's oceans, but not saying where because a number like 148.3821 km SSE of the Cocos Islands is going to be meaningless to most people.
- colecut 3y agoI guess they could have said the laser frequency is about 2.02 petahertz
- infogulch 3y agoOh that's about 0.0000000014 football fields. More seriously, apparently it takes a photon with a wavelength of 92nm to eject an electron from a hydrogen atom. Maybe this is a reasonable reference/refresher: https://web.archive.org/web/20210413042937/https://www.nagwa.com/en/explainers/280124287090/ https://web.archive.org/web/20210413042937/https://www.nagwa...
- megous 3y ago[dead]
- shiandow 3y agoMore to the point >400nm is visible light, this puts 148nm well within the ultraviolet range. Though it's not too far removed from the visible spectrum, wouldn't surprise me if some animals could see it.
- LeifCarrotson 3y ago148 doesn't feel too far removed from the visible spectrum, but it's in the wrong direction for animals to make use of it. I'm no biologist, but I'd be shocked if there were any animals that had adapted sensitivity to a type of radiation that they are never exposed to in nature. The sun doesn't really emit much UV-C light: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance#Absorption_and_reflection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_irradiance#Absorption_an... and the light that is emitted is absorbed by the atmosphere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet#Solar_ultraviolet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraviolet#Solar_ultraviolet It's useful to be able to see a little UV-A, perhaps, and very useful for predators to see 'heat' into the IR range, but if your eyes were sensitive to 148nm, the world would be pretty dark. Maybe after a few million years, in the grinding dust in the back of my shop, something will evolve that has a symbiotic relationship to arc welders...
- dtx1 3y agoWhat does "exciting a nucleus" mean?
- atoav 3y agoNot a physicist but "exciting" a thing means to make it oscillate e.g. by adding energy into the system. A violin player is exciting the string of her instrument using a bow. Now in this case they use lasers. I suspect if you choose the right wavelenght (=frequency) of light there is some sort of resonance phenomenom.
- sebws 3y agoThe article mentions switching between "energy states": > This nucleus has two very closely adjacent energy states – so closely adjacent that a laser should in principle be sufficient to change the state of the atomic nucleus. > the correct energy of the thorium transition was hit exactly, the thorium nuclei delivered a clear signal for the first time. The laser beam had actually switched their state. I don't know enough to explain any further.
- gilgoomesh 3y agoApplying energy to lift its electrons across a band gap. In this case, applying 8.35574 electron volts.
- mypalmike 3y agoI thought this was an excitation of the state of the nucleus rather than that of electrons.
- popol12 3y agoYou’re right, parent read too fast
- Turneyboy 3y agoWe know how to do this and have observed this tons of times at this point. This would not be novel in any way. This is about exciting the nucleus which is completely different.
- gwd 3y ago> It could be used, for example, to build an nuclear clock that could measure time more precisely than the best atomic clocks available today. Are today's atomic clocks really so imprecise? Without further explanation of this, it reminds me of this comic (which is alas showing its age both by mentioning flash, and by implying that 1024 is already a uselessly high number of cpus to support): https://xkcd.com/619/ https://xkcd.com/619/
- fancy_pantser 3y agoIntel GPU joke in the alt text, truly timeless.
- nullc 3y agoNow how the heck do you generate ~148.38nm light with a narrow linewidth? Their approach using four-wave mixing inherently results in short pulses. .. and given that it decays through gamma emission, does this mean we could now build an optically pumped gamma ray laser?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- M95D 3y agoThe gamma emission would have to re-excite other atoms in a cascade to create a laser. Since the exciting energy is UV, not gamma => no cascade amplification. A "wavelength converter" might be possible. PS: Are you sure it's gamma emission? That takes more energy than the exciting UV photon.
- karma_pharmer 3y ago> PS: Are you sure it's gamma emission? That takes more energy than the exciting UV photon. Apparently it is neither: Decay of the 229Th isomeric state of the neutral thorium atom occurs predominantly by internal conversion (IC) with emission of an electron https://www.nature.com/articles/nature17669 https://www.nature.com/articles/nature17669 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_conversion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_conversion This is pretty weird. You shine UV light (with exactly the right wavelength) on 229Th, and it spits out electrons. But not like the photoelectric effect, where the electrons stop as soon as you turn off the light. No no. The Thorium keeps spitting out an exponentially-decaying stream of electrons for hours after you stop illuminating it. Almost like an exponentially-discharging solar-powered current source (for a very specific wavelength of "solar").
- nullc 3y agoApparently in some ionized states it can't produce the electron and will instead produce the gamma, I'm unclear where the extra energy comes from. > Almost like an exponentially-discharging solar-powered current source (for a very specific wavelength of "solar"). If one could make the UV source highly efficient perhaps it could be used as a battery with extremely good energy density.
- yread 3y agoIs there some direct application? Like using the excitation states of different atoms for storing information?
- irjustin 3y agoThe article directly stated more precise atomic clocks.
- pzs 3y agoNot a physicist, so I am asking out of curiosity and to learn: have the limitations to the precision of current atomic clocks posed any problems?
- huytersd 3y agoIf I remember correctly GPS is effected but the ultra precise version the gov uses can error correct pretty well. I would think greater GPS precision at a lower cost?
- sgt101 3y agosynchronization of compute across data centers is something I've used atomic clocks for, precision and cost are an issue.
- Dibby053 3y agoSounds interesting. If you don't mind me asking, what sort of computation requires synchronization across data centers? And why couldn't it be done with NTP?
- sgt101 3y agoEssentially distributed consistency and co-ordination. NTP isn't accurate/consistent enough because of light speed being limited. This matters for applications like network management and large scale control.
- sharpshadow 3y agoThat’s great news! As far as I understand constants are not an easy topic and being able to analyse more precisely is a big win.
- Geenkaas 3y agoMy high school physics class flashes back to me, I don't think I understand a fraction of it but it seems very exciting (pun intended). I was reading up on this (now outdated) wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_thorium#Thorium-229m https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_thorium#Thorium-22... And it mentions the application as qubit for quantum computers. If the state change is relatively simple, cheap and stable, what could this do for quantum computing? I picture a crystalline processor holding Thorium nuclei as the brains of a new supercomputer? Would that be viable?
- bamboozled 3y agoFor example, the Earth's gravitational field could be analyzed so precisely that it could provide indications of mineral resources Resources companies are salivating
- worldsayshi 3y agoIt wouldn't be precise enough to measure things like what type of rock you have underneath when you're thinking about digging a tunnel or to find land mines in dirt right?
- alexey-salmin 3y agoDid anyone understand how they hold a nucleus (not an atom) in a crystal? Nucleus is charged and seeks electrons, I thought you need an electromagnetic trap for that (which the article says they don't use).
- spuz 3y agoThey use Th4+ ions, not nuclei. The lack of 4 electrons in the Th cations is compensated for by the surrounding F- anions.
- rsfern 3y agoThey grew CaF2 crystals with a small amount of thorium, which take the place of some of the Ca atoms in the crystal lattice. There’s an illustration in fig 1 of the preprint of what the substitutional defects look like Like the other poster mentions, CaF2 is an ionic crystal, but I don’t think that’s an important detail because you wouldn’t expect a nuclear transition to be affected by the bonding state of the electrons. My guess is it’s just a convenient way to get a very dilute collection of thorium atoms without using an ion trap
- est 3y ago> But it is not just time that could be measured much more precisely in this way than before. For example, the Earth's gravitational field could be analyzed so precisely that it could provide indications of mineral resources or earthquakes This has military applications as well, right? Replacing GPS for nuclear submarines. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29213751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29213751 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36222625 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36222625
- lifeisstillgood 3y ago>>> For example, the Earth's gravitational field could be analyzed so precisely that it could provide indications of mineral resources Hold on how does that work? I have had a sort of sci-fi idea that sufficiently sensitive gravitational field measurements coukd detect the passing of submarines (I am not sure on the maths tbh) - which would render a lot of nuclear strategy moot. Just need to get a grasp on the maths
- meindnoch 3y agohttps://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1012150.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1012150.pdf Gravitational Detection of Submarines, PM Moser 1989
- moffkalast 3y agoThat then makes single SLBM drone swarms the new meta. Spread them over a large enough area and it'll just seem like tectonic activity.
- perihelions 3y agoLook at what paper actually says: flat "not achievable" in the abstract; and the scaling laws on page 4 are third- and fourth- inverse powers of distance (!!!!); and on page 7 they're considering ranges of the same length scale as a submarine itself (few hundreds of meters), and even there it's hopeless. This one's never going to happen. Geologic mass concentrations are an entirely different story: you get a gravitational monopole, which is a more reasonable inverse square law. (No monopoles for a submarine, because by design they have a mean density equal to water—as the paper explains).
- Eliezer 3y agoWhat an excellent retrospectively obvious point!
- rpastuszak 3y agoCheck out quantum navigation systems. They're not used to track submarines, but rather as an alternative to GPS for submarines (using tiny differences in the Earth's gravitational field to determine position). (IIRC) Royal Navy trialed it (officially) for the first time last year.
- thebruce87m 3y agoAmerican football or European football? This is like the gallon thing all over again.
- lionkor 3y agostandard football field size, or empirical average?
- defrost 3y agoI suspect the average football field size across the former British Empire is close to the FIFA standard. Throw in Australian Rules Football fields if you're looking for a maximum, particularly if orginal marn-grook is in the mix.
- Someone 3y ago> suspect the average football field size across the former British Empire is close to the FIFA standard. The FIFA standard (https://downloads.theifab.com/downloads/laws-of-the-game-2023-24?l=en https://downloads.theifab.com/downloads/laws-of-the-game-202...) leaves a lot of leeway: “3. Dimensions The touchline must be longer than the goal line. • Length (touchline): minimum 90 m (100 yds), maximum 120m (130 yds) • Length (goal line): minimum 45 m (50 yds), maximum 90m (100 yds)” So, a field can be almost square at 90m × 89m or approaching thrice as long as wide, at 120m × 45m. Reason for this is prior art that can be hard to change (if there’s a stadium around your field, and it’s deemed too small, you’d have to demolish it to make the field fit the standard) Various competitions restrict this, though.
- defrost 3y agoInteresting .. I hadn't realised there'd be so much give in the FIFA specs! Thankyou for looking that up.
- wil421 3y agoLaden or unladen?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- femto 3y agoAn obvious question is whether this be used to build a nuclear analogue of a laser, using nuclear transitions instead of electron transitions. It turns out to have already been asked: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/296237/nuclear-transition-laser https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/296237/nuclear-t... In summary, the answer seems to be "maybe, but why?". The laser was originally called "a solution in search of a problem", which would suggest that "why" isn't really a reason not to. https://ask.metafilter.com/148055/Who-first-called-lasers-a-solution-in-search-of-a-problem https://ask.metafilter.com/148055/Who-first-called-lasers-a-...
- smaddox 3y agoTo build a laser, you would need at least three energy levels, and ideally four, with particular constraints in the transition probabilties so that you can create population inversion. And you would need to pump it with a higher-energy (shorter wavelength) laser. Perhaps doable with a free electron laser, but probably not with traditional lasers, due to the energies involved. But, yeah, not sure what the use would be. Maybe a form of lidar that allowed measuring speed of objects to extreme precision, by measuring the dopler shift of reflected light? (Assuming light at such a short wavelength is reflected sufficiently, which it probably wouldn't be). If there happened to be one atom/matrix that could be tuned to the transition energy of another atom's fission transition energy, then you could use it to burn nuclear material / waste. But you could just do that with the pump laser directly. I suppose you could maybe pump such a laser with a very high temperature plasma (like fusion temperatures hot), rather than with a free electron laser. Then maybe it might make more sense.
- rolph 3y agothis may interest you: "Solid-state 229 Th nuclear laser with two-photon pumping" http://web.mit.edu/pcappell/www/pubs/Xu23a.pdf http://web.mit.edu/pcappell/www/pubs/Xu23a.pdf [pdf]
- smaddox 3y agoVery interesting! Two-photon pumping of traditional lasers with only 2 states would require absurd energy densities, but I guess the combination of a strong quadrupole coupling and long state decay times makes it feasible for a nuclear laser. Still not clear what it would be useful for outside of clocks, but definitely a very cool physics project, and I'm sure someone would find other uses eventually.
- jncfhnb 3y ago1) does this have any relevance to thorium as nuclear fuel? Looks like no. 2) is there any significance to the units of the wave length? Like they’ve narrowed it down to a number. Does that granularity map to anything? Some sort of discrete scale? Or is there going to be a range of values that work +/- a super tiny value.
- adrian_b 3y agoThis has indeed no relationship with nuclear energy, except that thorium 229 is produced in nuclear reactors. This achievement is a step (the most important one) towards the goal of making an atomic clock that uses thorium 229 (which has important advantages mentioned in another posting).
- baybal2 3y ago[dead]
- acidburnNSA 3y agoNot yet. But if someone could condition nuclear fuel atoms so that when they do fission, they consistently break into one delayed neutron precursor and one stable or near stable atom with no long-term afterglow heat, that could revolutionize nuclear power. I've been told that this dream is impossible but it's still my 1 genie wish. Right now they break into 50% of the periodic table and cause all sorts of grief.
- dharma1 3y agoWhat stocks do I long, armed with this information :)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- avsteele 3y agoNice to see this happen! When this was attempted with trapped ions, I and my colleagues at GaTech were the first to trap and laser cool Th(232) 3+ https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/kuzmich-lab/wp-content/uploads/sites/90/2014/05/thorium_1.pdf https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/kuzmich-lab/wp-content/uploads/s...
- swamp40 3y ago> thorium crystal clock Take note, science fiction writers.
- ISL 3y agoNo time to elaborate at the moment. Just want to say that this is extremely exciting news. Finding the thorium line is one of the most important open problems in precision/fundamental measurement.
- einpoklum 3y ago> this is extremely exciting That's what the Thorium said! [rim shot]
- einpoklum 3y ago> For the first time, it has been possible to use a laser to transfer an atomic nucleus into a state of higher energy and then precisely track its return to its original state. We've known about photon-atom interactions for well over 100 years, with excitation of electrons which are either released or drop back to the original orbit, right? So, ok, the Nucleus is smaller and the energies to alter the quantum state are probably higher, but - why is this so special, and why Thorium in particular rather than any old nuclei? Disclaimer: I'm not a physicist.
- was_a_dev 3y agoThe energy required to alter nuclear states is often in the MeV energy range, where Thorium is a rare example that has a very close state to the ground state, seperated by 8.4eV (100,000 less energy) This means that to exicte to this nuclear state is possible using an ultraviolet laser It has important applications for nuclear theory, nuclear atomic clocks and fundemental constant metrology.
- enslavedrobot 3y agoVery cool. Probably impossible but I wonder if you could see non-linear nuclear effects if you hit it with enough intensity. Laser induced fission anyone?
- _Microft 3y agoLook up „hafnium controversy“: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafnium_controversy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafnium_controversy
- enslavedrobot 3y agoInteresting. Hafnium oxide is my go-to film coating when I want something impervious to etching. That stuff is bomb proof. 31 year half-life gamma emitter is just one more reason to love it!
- davidwritesbugs 3y agoWould this have any relevance to inertial navigation sensors?
- cwillu 3y agoLiterally over 50% of the viewport is taken up by sticky toolbar crap, depending on the window size.
- MilStdJunkie 3y agoWhen you stop and look at QCD in the big picture, it's sort of shocking how little we know - like, really, really know - about the internal structure of the proton, or even the nucleon! It's the curse of "probing" with massive energies. No one's a hundred percent certain of whether they're detecting something that's actually there - like there there - or whether they're looking at by-product of enormous collision energies. Physicists are smart people! I could never do what they do. But there's a limit to certainty, and inside the proton especially there's unknown first principles at work. Bringing the precision of photons and lasers into this nucleon party is going to be huge. I can't wait!
- javajosh 3y agoYeah and maybe we could do GR experiments on a table top. Gravity goes as 1/r^2 so a small r might make the mass terms irrelevant, and you could check GR in various ways [1] especially Shapiro delay[2]. This would, in turn, give a way to probe quantum gravity effects. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapiro_time_delay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapiro_time_delay
- blackoil 3y ago> it's sort of shocking how little we know To my feeble mind, it's shocking how much we know.
- purplerabbit 3y agoOur knowledge and ignorance are both astounding. But there's definitely more we don't know than that we know.
- MilStdJunkie 3y agoSpeaking for myself, as a layman, I had always been walking around thinking of hadrons as balls with other balls inside, with forces mediated by tiny/insubstantial yet-to-be-discovered balls. Yes, I knew they weren't balls, exactly, but still. Newer models with greater sensitivity have sort of pulled a fast one: that maybe the balls are a side effect of the way we look at them. More precisely, to look at them, we need to smack them hella hard, to make the balls come out where we can see them. But the smacking might be a part of why the balls look like balls! The native hadron in its natural habitat might be something fantastically more complex, a sort of cell biology of energies all competing and vibrating, and they're part of the interrelated forces of the nucleus itself - we might even use that obsolete term return, the "nucleon", to represent this complex. Jiving against all of this are new ideas about what mass actually is, defining spatial attributes as degrees of freedom, and all sorts of new thoughts. It's super exciting. So that's what I mean by "shocked how little we know", because what we did think we knew got oversold as a World of Balls. But who knows?! Maybe this neat laser thing can help find more answers.
- ThinkBeat 3y agoIs this of any value when it comes to nuclear energy creation?
- m3kw9 3y agoThe way to know if a “breakthrough” could be legit is by observing the comment count of a post that says breakthrough
- shadowtree 3y agoMan, Vienna is killing it in physics. Nobel in 2022 for Zeilinger Nobel in 2023 for Kraus, who did his work at TU Wien Now this. Giving a lot of other unis a run for their money.
- j33zusjuice 3y agoWhat impact could this have on the value of cesium? Some time ago, I remember reading about cesium’s importance to tech, particularly for atomic clocks. It was in an article about the potential discovery of a cesium mine that might have huge political impact because China owns most of the cesium mines. And I imagine being able to replace cesium entirely would have similar impact.
- cryptonector 3y agoWhat's really neat about this is the technique of embedding Thorium atoms in a crystal, which makes it possible to start thinking about solid state devices (specifically: nuclear clocks) based on this.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- drakebake 3y agoHey, I'm one of the authors on the paper and see that people are curious about things. I'm happy to answer any questions, cool to find this here!