Hacker News Reader

Comment by MostlyStable | Hacker News Reader

What are the practical considerations of being able to measure time/gravity/etc more accurately?

Will this make GPS cheaper/more accurate? Will this allow better astronomical observations?

Note that I'm certainly not against blue-sky science where we don't immediately know of any practical uses. As the end of the article specifies, pure research often ends up paying dividends down the line.

But I'm curious if there are any more immediate applications.

View on HN

I think currently most of these things are dominated by other sources of noise such that a more precise clock isn't that big of an improvement, but the article claims these kinds of clocks could also be smaller than an atomic one, which may make them worth using. Could be useful for things like submarine navigation via gravitational mapping or other applications where size and lifetime/maintenance requirements might favor this design over a standard atomic clock.

>> we don't immediately know of any practical uses.

A nuclear clock may be accurate enough that speed could be measured by time dilation alone. More accurate clocks could mean better calibration and more precise tools that contribute to all manner of communication techs.

> What are the practical considerations of being able to measure time/gravity/etc more accurately?

Likely nothing in the near term. Calibrating constants lets us project the limits of reality further and more confidently. The practical implications of that are in letting crazy shit get greenlit, e.g. the Manhattan project from nuclear physics or the light bulb from quantum mechanics.

> or the light bulb from quantum mechanics.

Electricity is the flow of ions, it's literally atomic science (albeit not "quantum" in the sense highly specialized sub field we know today).

Ok but so is everything? The phrasing makes it sound like they were saying that the development of the lightbulb was through understanding of quantum mechanics (which, it of course was not).

Only the LED light bulb. And then only kind of, they use approximations.

Adding more decimal points to various physical constants. Any everyday applications are far away.

Do you like having precise GPS? That requires using atomic clocks and the general theory of relativity.

We do but with breakthroughs in science, the future uses are impossible to see now, sometimes they lead to incredible things. When Maxwell confirmed that light is also electromagnetic force with much more than just visible light in it, then all the atom discoveries and after that all the texhnologies like computer and what not, or making laser led to compact disc drives for example. I think precise nuclear measurments might help someday discover/confirm something new in physics

The atomic clocks used in GPS are many orders of magnitude worse than state-of-the-art, and are not a significant limitation for the accuracy of the system.

We seem to have been able to build GPS without this breakthrough.

TFA mentions scaling atomic clocks down from room sized, which they already are according to google’s AI, but maybe the engineering tradeoffs to do so could be improved.

Yeah, tiny atomic clocks/frequency references the size of a matchbox are something you can just buy for a couple thousand dollars. Mostly useful for stuff like cellular base stations, seismic measurements, and a bunch of military applications.

* https://www.microchip.com/en-us/product/MAC-SA53#purchase-fr...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com