Carols at Trafalgar Sq.
Add comment December 20th, 2007
Archive for December, 2007
Half a Person
And if you have five seconds to spare
Then I’ll tell you the story of my life:
Sixteen, clumsy and shy
I went to London and I
I booked myself in at the Y … W.C.A.
I said : “I like it here - can I stay?
I like it here - can I stay?
And do you have a vacancy
For a Back-scrubber?”
[The Smiths]
Add comment December 19th, 2007
The ever-unreachable now
“Each atom has its own spectral signature,” says Hollberg. Calcium resonates to red, ytterbium to purple. At their most ambitious, NIST scientists hope to wring 10-18 out of a single trapped mercury ion with a chartreuse light — slicing a second of time into a quadrillion pieces.
At that level, clocks will be precise enough that they’ll have to correct for the relativistic effects of the shape of the earth, which changes every day in reaction to environmental factors. (Some of the research clocks already need to account for changes in the NIST building’s size on a hot day.) That’s where the work at the Time and Frequency Division begins to overlap with cosmology, astrophysics and space-time.
[Wired, Full article]
Add comment December 12th, 2007
