Time to go atomic on space station

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THE International Space Station determination almost immediately host the the majority precise clock still healthy eager on space. It determination let for improved synchronisation of clocks on Earth and too probe foreign physics.

The experiment, attract Atomic Clock Ensemble in Space (ACES), determination be liberally by EADS Astrium and is scheduled to fly to the room station in 2014, the European Space Agency announced previous week. It determination stay path of occasion by measuring the frequency of microwaves absorbed by cooled caesium atoms.

On Earth, the accuracy of caesium clocks is incomplete by gravity. The atoms are cooled by by,by means of lasers to slow not any down, after that tossed upwards eager on a cavity anywhere measurements are complete to decide the exact frequency of banquet radiation so as to contain absorb and emit. In microgravity, the atoms linger in the cavity, allowing for longer and additional precise measurements, trial John Prestage of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who is not involved in the project.

ACES be hypothetical to be at smallest amount 100 era as precise as the clocks on GPS satellites, adds Prestage.

Using the space-station clock as a ordinary tip of reference, ground-based atomic clocks might be additional precisely better by means of one another. What's more, variations recognized by atomic clocks might reveal if a bodily steady attract alpha " construct governs the electromagnetic force " is not steady following all.

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