4 ms·
Interestingly: > One isotope, ²²⁹Th, has a nuclear isomer (or metastable state) with a remarkably low excitation energy, recently measured to be 8.35574 eV. It
by nayuki 2y ago
Interestingly:
> One isotope, ²²⁹Th, has a nuclear isomer (or metastable state) with a remarkably low excitation energy, recently measured to be 8.35574 eV. It has been proposed to perform laser spectroscopy of the ²²⁹Th nucleus and use the low-energy transition for the development of a nuclear clock of extremely high accuracy.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_thorium https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_thorium
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_clock https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_clock
- staunton 2y agoStorage and cooling of thorium ions has also been achieved already. It's only a matter of time before a clock is built using such an ion-trap setup (and a matter of significantly more time until auch a clock can be used in real-world applications). The article is talking about avoiding this but I believe the first thorium clock will likely be an ion trap. A nice website collecting information about this is https://thoriumclock.eu https://thoriumclock.eu