Our New Atomic Clock Is So Precise That We Need a Better Understanding of Gravity To Use It

[rangerrebew]

Our New Atomic Clock Is So Precise That We Need a Better Understanding of Gravity To Use It

Our measurements of gravity are not good enough for NIST's new atomic clock.
 
By Avery Thompson   
Nov 30, 2018
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National Institute of Standards and Technology   

The scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Measurement have one big job: to measure things as accurately as possible. To do that, they build a lot of big and complicated machines, including precise tape measures and absolutely gigantic scales.

For the past few years, NIST has been building the world’s most accurate clock, and new research shows it’s actually too precise. How so? It turns out our understanding of the Earth’s gravity is not good enough to take full advantage of the clock.

NIST’s clock doesn’t use gears or springs or even quartz crystals like what's inside a modern wristwatch. Their atomic clock, which occupies an entire table, works by hitting atoms with microwave radiation, which causes electrons inside those atoms to oscillate at a specific frequency.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a25362045/nist-atomic-clock-gravity/

[Skeptic]

Gravity is very difficult to determine on a small scale like the one they propose; centimeter to centimeter. The difficulty is with scaling and unknown factors of gravitational force. Every atom has a gravitational pull. Each element, based on its density, has a different strength of gravitational pull. When you connect different masses their gravitational pull changes. You can see a simplified version of this when you put a pile of magnets together of varying sizes and powers. So, these scientists must first know all of these factors and how these factors change before they can calculate actual gravity power centimeter to centimeter. And since gravity is very weak on that small scale the technology doesn't exist to measure gravitational power of something such like a marble or a dime or a marble on a dime. Plus, any object that isn't symmetrical in every direction would have an uneven gravitational pull in each direction. As you can see the calculating gets massive as you scale out the area and section each centimeter for measurement. There would be a simpler way to measure that force at particularly exact points someday but not anytime soon.

[Wingnut]

And yet we are still dicking around springing forward and falling back.  Lets fix the simple stuff now and let the big problems solve themselves in due time.


Not to mention the obvious but the scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Measurement are putting 10 dollars worth of thought into a 2 dollar problem.