“Hearst Magazines and Yahoo may earn commission or revenue on some items through these links.”<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s what you\u2019ll learn when you read this story:<\/p>\n
Timekeeping has evolved greatly during humanity\u2019s short time on Earth, and that legacy of metrological innovation is far from over.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
A new study from a team of international scientists analyzes whether quantum effects, such as quantum transport, could help push accuracy higher without an accompanying 1:1 increase in entropy.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Although this theory appears to improve accuracy exponentially scientists will need to test the idea using superconducting circuits if they expect to remove one of the thermodynamic limits of hyper-accurate timekeeping.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Humanity has come a long way in its time on this planet, and the ways we count the passage of that time has followed suit. Not too long ago (cosmically speaking), rudimentary water clocks were seen as groundbreaking inventions<\/a>, and now we officially count a second by tracking the tiny oscillations of a cesium atom. Our foray into the subatomic world over the last century has now pushed scientists and engineers so far that they were able to build a clock capable of ticking without error for 300 billion years<\/a>.<\/p>\n However, even the laws of quantum physics have limitations. Any system involves some level of uncertainty, and the common thinking has always been that if you wanted to make a clock that was twice as accurate as its predecessor, you would need to apply twice as much energy. But now, an international team of scientists (hailing from TU Wien in Austria, Chalmers University in Sweden, and the University of Malta) claims to have found a novel workaround to this entropic limit by essentially leveraging two different time scales\u2014one operating in terms of quantum physics<\/a> and the other in terms of \u201centropy-generating effects.\u201d This means that an exponential increase in accuracy is possible per increase in entropy, which is a neat little trick that will be vital for future measurements of quantum phenomena. The results of the study were published in the journal Nature Physics<\/a>.<\/p>\n To understand how this kind of clock<\/a> would work, it helps to go back to the basics and analyze the structural components that make up what we think of as a clock.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery clock needs two components: first, a time base generator\u2014such as a pendulum in a pendulum clock, or even a quantum oscillation,\u201d Marcus Huber, the senior author of the study from TU Wien, said in a press statement<\/a>. \u201cAnd second, a counter\u2014any element that counts how many time units defined by the time base generator have already passed.\u201d<\/p>\n Due to this \u201ctime base generator,\u201d clocks are connected to an irreversible process, meaning that they add entropy to the universe. In the case of a grandfather clock<\/a>, for example, the pendulum introduces trace amounts of heat, as do the lasers that read the state of a cesium atom. This is where scientists got the idea that any clock with increased precision also has increased entropy on a mostly 1:1 scale, due to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. However, a new technique that leverages quantum transport allows a particle to essentially be everywhere at once until it\u2019s measure. This doesn\u2019t introduce entropy, and appears to be the trick for exponentially more accurate clocks.<\/p>\n \u201cSo we have a fast process that does not cause entropy<\/a>\u2014quantum transport\u2014and a slow one, namely the arrival of the particle at the very end,\u201d Yuri Minoguchi, a co-author of the study from TU Wien, said in a press statement. \u201cThe crucial thing about our method is that one hand behaves purely in terms of quantum physics, and only the other, slower hand actually has an entropy-generating effect.\u201d<\/p>\n