NASA To Test New Atomic Clock 79
edesio writes "Many satellites and spacecraft require accurate timing signals to ensure the proper operation of scientific instruments. In the case of GPS satellites, accurate timing is essential, otherwise anything relying on GPS signals to navigate could be misdirected. The third technology demonstration planned by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is the Deep Space Atomic Clock. The DSAC team plans to develop a small, low-mass atomic clock based on mercury-ion trap technology and demonstrate it in space."
Maybe (Score:1)
Maybe this one will be able to do something as simple as timing neutrinos properly.
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All they need to do is send 1 male and 1female astronaut up, pretend to tell them to have sex, and then pretend to find out they exhibit all the typical dysfunctions your 40+ laze abouts do.
Then send them up again, tell them them to take these special space sex placebos, and put out a press release along the lines of "First Child Conceived In Space Thanks To New Sex Pills!".
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You forgot to Post Anonymously.
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Oh, that is YOUR article? BWAHAHAHAAA. Sorry, I will stop arguing with you now. Only an idiot continues to argue with fools.
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Re:Could become the final nail in Einstein's relat (Score:4, Informative)
You certainly typed a lot of words to say "I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about". As far as scientific theories go relativity has a lot of very strong experimental [wikipedia.org] support [wikipedia.org]. Though I suppose if you want to say it's "obviously wrong" you might want to include some actual experimental verification or even peer reviewed papers of such a claim, you know, to enlighten us bozos.
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Based on the relativity theory though, humans are pretty much earthbound, Mars at best. 1 light year = guess what?
To achieve anything significant in the universe, it's pretty obvious it needs to be broken.
All of our theories, laws and measurements are earth based and earth bound.
Now Einstein's theory is probably 100% on planet earth in our current physics model, but I'ma laugh if you say it applies to a place in space thousands of light years away. It very well may, but neither you nor I can prove that, an
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Just because you don't know what the hell you're talking about doesn't mean no one else knows what they're talking about.
You're stupid.
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Your a fuckin retard for even replying to any post. There's a hole somewhere for you, it's not on the internet though.
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Also a lot of words to say "I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about".
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Besides your link to some dude's blog, what is your support for saying Einstein's theories are "obviously wrong"?
If his theories are wrong, how do you deal with the fact that they have been supported with countless experiments, and our GPS system depends on his theories to keep accurate timings down to the billionth of a second?
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It's my own site, I pointed to....
Einstein's theory stands or falls with the speed of light being constant. Since that depends on the properties of the medium, apparantly these are pretty constant in the vicinity of the planet, which is why the theory gives you the correct numbers in 99 out of 100 cases. You'd expect anomalies further out in space, and that is exactly what you see. Take the Pioneer anomaly, for example. That also only gives slight deviations of what is supposed to happen now the probes are
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The Pioneer anomaly has been explained by far less exotic answers... thermal radiation pressure is the likely culprit. Sorry, but you sound like a conspiracy theorist more than a scientist.
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Einstein's theory stands or falls with the speed of light being constant.
Yeah, and so far our experiments have confirmed that over and over again. That doesn't mean that the theory is right, in fact we know that it is very likely wrong, as it doesn't play nice with quantum mechanics, but science isn't about right or wrong or finding absolute truth, it's about finding the best theory to explain and predict our observations and so far the theory is the best we got. If our experiments get more detailed and unexplainable reproducible errors show up, then we might need to update the
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The constant speed of light is constant only in a given medium. Not only Einstein, but plenty of other scientists and mathematicians have covered that completely. Einstein's models account for different media.
You're just another childish egotist who thinks Einstein's work was some kind of great big "gotcha", so you'll just pull one off yourself.
You're stupid. Shut up.
Re:Could become the final nail in Einstein's relat (Score:4, Informative)
And you link to a blog which states
"This way, the scientific establishment will slowly but surely be forced to return to reality, the reality of the existence of a real, physical ether with fluid-like properties."
You realize that the "ether" theory has been absolutely blown out of the water, right? Countless experiments were conducted to determine our motion through this either. all experiments showed the speed of light does not depend on the observer's velocity. It was only after these countless experiments that science finally accepted that there is no absolute vantage point.
But if you don't even understand this, you should presume to disagree with Einstein. Free speech may entitle you to disagree... but free speech also entitles the rest of us to call you out for the uninformed person that you are.
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The "impossible" particles are likely due to miscalculation of relativity effects due to GPS satellites moving. The "impossible" star is possible under the laws of physics, but so improbable that it goes against theories of the exact sequence of events leading to a star's formation, and has nothing to do with relativity. The Pioneer anomaly has many possible causes, few of which involve a new cosmological theory.
Sorry, but worship of Tesla is just as bad as worship of Einstein.
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Tesla was a genius, and in the quote you gave I believe he was right... but also wrong. Space cannot curve if space is nothing. But space is not nothing. The work of people like Riemann and Lobachevski have shown that space can in fact possess properties inherently. This makes a kind of sense: when we talk about 5 feet of space, that space has an objective reality and possesses some property (namely, dimension) that allows use to quantify it. Einstein deals with this question somewhat BTW.
Interestingly eno
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Last week the newspapers were filled with the discovery of "impossible" particles traveling faster than the speed of light.
And while Relativity must be subjected to the highest standards of evidence(and is), this discovery of course must be accepted as the complete truth as soon as it comes out.
earlier the Pioneer space probes also refused to adhere to the law
I love how the Pioneer Anomaly is always used as proof of whatever crackpot theory someone wants it to, or dis-proof of whatever theory they want to discredit even if only tangentially related. But in reality, anomalies like this are usually best understood by more fully understanding the circumstances. For example, once someone went t
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Wow my list of science deniers has AGW denialists, anti-vax'ers, stem cell denialists and now a theory of relativity denialist!
Best line in your article:
And because space is not physical at all, it can have no physical properties.
XD
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Heh. That's nothing new, really. Ever heard of The Electric Universe? Whole gaggle of crackpots who claim the universe is dominated by electricity while simultaneously not understanding it. Not only is Relativity out for them, but even Newtonian gravity doesn't explain the motion of planets as far as they're concerned.
I gotta admit, though, this is a new take on crackpottery and that's always amusing.
Not quite as amusing as the Conservation of Momentum/Energy Denialist that was haunting Slashdot for a w
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A Conservation of Energy denier? Wow how does that work? Sounds like it could be a troll presenting Troll Science with a serious face.
I've seen plenty of crackpot forums but you don't expect their users to post on Slashdot. The Flat Earth Society is hilarious, but a lot of people say it's a big joke, like if Conservapedia was run entirely by Conservatroll players.
If they were serious they would be the most vocal environmentalist protesters, because if that ice wall melts most of the water would fall off the
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Well, they weren't explicitly a CoE denier. They were explicitly a CoM denier who was just ignorant of the connection... They proposed an Aristotlean theory of motion, where an object maintaining non-zero momentum required a constant input of energy, and you could use this universal energy to ignore momentum and instantly start and stop or turn 90 degrees like the old Light Cycles from Tron.
They easily could have been a troll, but they went to a lot of trouble for it. They had their own blog with a lengt
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Experiment: You measure 1 meter out, and then turn 90 degrees to your right, measure 1 meter out, turn 90 degrees right, and measure 1 meter, how far will you be from the starting point? Answer: 1 meter
Similar experiment: You measure 1 km, turn 90 degrees, and do this twice more, how far will you be from the starting position? Answer: 1 km
Similar experiment: You measure 10,000 km, turn 90 degrees, and do this twice more, how far will you be from the starting position? Answer: Approx. 0 km (Why? Be
Atomic? That means radiation right? (Score:1, Funny)
I'm not so sure that I can support anything radioactive while the poor people in Japan are dealing with their atomic disaster and remember Chernobyl? people can't live there anymore. All because of atomic clocks
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You know what's frightening?
Many people would actually believe you.
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BMO
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I stand corrected.
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BMO
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Wow, wrong thread.
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BMO
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No, nobody would believe them. That's why they had to make it up, and get another clown to say many people would believe them.
You nuke fetishists are so desperate now that Japan nuked itself that you have to invent people to believe the BS you make up, even when that BS is against yourselves.
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An atomic clock could just measure radiation as harmless as the one the sun sends out your way... every second of every day... Billions of times...
I know you were trying to be ironic, but the "it's atomic so it must be bad" just irks me.
As for energy... Solar and Fusion's the way to go, it's just more complicated to do it "Right".
We never seem to get things "right" we always stop at getting the shortcuts... and then we complain we have problems...
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You can't hug your children with Nuclear Arms.
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You can't hug your children with Nuclear Arms.
I don't see why not -- just take your nuclear arms, gently put them around the child, and there you go. Is it because it's too difficult to make a tactical nuke small enough that the human skeleton and shoulder muscles would be able to lift it? If we're replacing the arms with nukes anyway, why not enhance the rest of the body so that it could? Seems like an engineering problem to me.
Wait, I get the feeling I'm missing something...
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Because of the mercury ions, use will be banned in the EU and California.
one word for you NASA (Score:1)
about time... (Score:5, Interesting)
Having once worked on GPS Satellite's clocking system, I was surprised that the AF was so against usage of atomic clocks phased-locked to crystals for accurate timing. Maybe the latest news about Galileo using atomic clock changed their mind?
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Re:about time... (Score:4, Informative)
there are plenty of Geo satellites with commercial off the shelve semiconductor parts that last 15+ years... Being in MEO and "only" lasting 12 or so years is no big deal...
GPS relevence is buried at the bottom (Score:5, Informative)
Were you a Payload Officer at 2 SOPS? And, are you referring to the Space or Ground segment? If you mean the backup clocks in the Mod, then that's slightly outside my knowledge. As far as the Space Segment, they've been reliably using Cesium and Rubium (atomic) clocks for over 3 decades. They don't want to change because it's known, reliable, etc. I was curious to note the newest generation of satellites dropped the 4th clock, and now launch with only 3. Since each clock is only usable a number of years (varies too much for me to generalize), I'd have thought they kept all four just in case the electrical system outlives normal design life, and you end up needing to go with a 4th clock when the 3rd one becomes too "deviant".
I think the GPS relevence is buried at the bottom of the article. Cesium and Rubidium clocks are both accurate to the nanosecond. That's just about as accurate as can be practical. The new atomic clock, however, they're saying is accurate LONGER. On GPS Satellites, the original satellites (Block I, II, IIA, IIR) launched with Cesium and Rubidium, 2 each. Usually you have one operational, sometimes one on "ready standby", and the other two off. As each atomic clock reaches the end of its mission-usable life, it's turned off. It become's "mission-unusable" (not a real term, I just made that up) when it's signal varies outside a normal window of acceptable predictability in terms of its output signal. There are design differences, such as Rubidium clocks have to stay within a tenth of a degree (F) in temperature stability (if memory serves correct). So, if they can create a clock that's more stable, for a longer period of time, this has huge potential for future GPS satellites. However, since we just awarded contract to Boeing the contract for IIF birds, with only 2 of 12 launched, it's going to be a very long time (decade at best) before you'd see this in a GPS satellite. Design life has also expanded from 7 to 12 years for each satellite (for point of reference Block I only had a design life of 3 years since they were R&D), so this pushes any usage even farther out since we're going to go longer before replacements need to be launched.
Good project.... (Score:2)
On a related subject... (Score:5, Informative)
ESA ACES (Score:5, Informative)
ESA will get there first, with the Atomic Clock Ensemble in Space [esa.int] (ACES) [smsc.cnes.fr], intended for the ISS in 2013, which should be good to ~ 10**-16 and will include a test of relativity [esa.int]. I believe that this [nasa.gov] is the JPL clock, which is aiming at 10**-15 stability, and a 2015 launch. (Both are fairly low earth orbits, with the JPL clock intended for an Iridium satellite.)
So, the JPL effort is cool, and I would love to see one flown to Mars or truly deep space, but this is one case where the Europeans are in the lead.
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Pharao is one component of ACES (see above).
More reading on [atomic] clocks (Score:3)
Time keeping is getting better and better. I just happened upon this article recently which gives some history on timekeeping and what some of the latest efforts are working on: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/334983/title/The_Ultimate_Clock [sciencenews.org].
Here's an excerpt (emphasis added):
PHARAO is 100x bigger than SpaceClock (Score:1)
There's a huge difference in size, mass, and power between PHARAO (which has impressive peformance) and the JPL DSAC/SpaceClock.
The former is 91 kg and draws 114 watts and is a meter long. The Hg+ ion clock is notionally 1 liter/1kg and a few watts.
Considering that for a deep space probe, a couple hundred kilos is the whole spacecraft and a couple hundred watts is the total power budget, that's the value of DSAC/SpaceClock.
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You are of course quite correct. But, ACES will still fly before DSAC does, which is something.
Deep space? (Score:2)
(letting aside that... heck... what should it have anything to do with "space"? It's an atomic clock, does it need 0-g to function?)
Re:Deep space? (Score:4, Informative)
Its a technology demonstration for hardware that will eventually make deep space navigation better.
This is being run out of the JPL navigation section and is intended to improve long-term capabilities with a small investment.
Re:Deep space? (Score:5, Informative)
Well, first, this is a NASA technology demonstration mission for a clock needed by JPL. That means that NASA is going to validate that this clock will work in space, so that JPL can use it where they operate (i.e., deep space, the Moon, Mars and beyond).
Second, yes, the very best modern clocks work differently with and without gravity. This is basically because the atoms used are so cold they are moving at human type velocities, and so gravity can't be ignored. The best terrestrial clocks are the fountains - take very cold atoms, moving at ~ 1 meter per second in a trap and shut off the trap. Some of the atoms (the ones that happen to be moving up) will ballistically go up, and then fall back down. (This is much like tossing your keys up 1 meter or so, and then catching them, except with single atoms.) The gravity is used to collimate the pulse of atoms going up and down, and (with timing the round trip) to select only the ultracold ones coming down. By timing the round trip, you can really select a particular set of velocities - the better constrained the velocity dispersion, the better constrained the clock read out.
NONE of that works in zero-G, and PHARAO (I am more familiar with this clock that the JPL Hg Ion one) is completely re-designed to use fountain-like ideas in a linear beam. I am not sure it would even work on the ground, and it definitely needs zero-g to meet its performance goals.
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Why not just put the atoms in a magnetic torus field or a circular track rather than a linear track? Seems they already use magnetic fields to sort out the atoms to get the ones in the correct phase.
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Why not just put the atoms in a magnetic torus field or a circular track rather than a linear track? Seems they already use magnetic fields to sort out the atoms to get the ones in the correct phase.
You basically don't want to accelerate the atoms if you don't have to, and in a ring they would be constantly accelerating. Gravity is a little different, as it is very smooth and doesn't require contact with structure, magnetic fields, etc.
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Deep Space clock, AKA, Pulsar [wikipedia.org].
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Naturally. They need to have a Beryllium clock... (Score:1)
Before they can get that TARDIS project working.
Although (Score:2)
the deep space clock will be accurate to 1 second every umpteen million years, but will need to be reset in a couple of weeks due to the change from daylight time to standard time.
Socialism (Score:1)
This project is clearly socialism.
If you think anything a government does is socialism.
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Taxes pay for GPS. Farmers use GPS to track crop yield so they can fertilize more efficiently. Using high accuracy GPS to repave roads, or build bridges properly is a no-brainer. GPS might help the ambulance get to you and back to the hospital seconds *before* you're dead. So yes, a better clock can improve all those aspects of your life. SWEET!!
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(:-) for the humor impaired.