As a result, the ticks of two identically built atomic clocks, for example, would never completely agree, if measured at this precision limit. The desynching means that it would be impossible for any physical clock to indefinitely maintain ticks of a constant period, placing a fundamental limit on the precision of clocks. The team finds that this interaction causes the two oscillators to slowly desynchronize. Instead, the coupling is imposed by requiring that the net energy of the oscillators remains constant in time-a condition derived directly from general relativity. The nature of this coupling is different from classical oscillators, which are coupled through a common force. The team couples the oscillators to allow them to interact. The faster oscillator represents the universal, fundamental clock, and the slower one represents a measurable system in the lab, such as the atom of an atomic clock. In the model, the team considers two quantum oscillators, which act like quantum pendulums oscillating at different rates. Their hope was that doing so might offer ideas for how to probe time’s fundamental properties. Aiming to gain insights into both problems, Bojowald and his colleagues imagined the universal clock as an oscillator and set out to derive its period. Similar to the Higgs field, the clock could interact with matter, and it could potentially modify physical phenomena, says Martin Bojowald of Pennsylvania State University in University Park.īut researchers have yet to develop a theory for such a clock, and they still don’t understand the fundamental nature of time. Such a fundamental clock would permeate the Universe, somewhat like the Higgs field from particle physics. Many agree that the solution requires that time be defined not as a continuous coordinate, but instead as the ticking of some physical clock, says Flaminia Giacomini, a quantum theorist at Canada’s Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (PITP). Theorists developing a quantum theory of gravity must reconcile these two descriptions of time. But in general relativity (the theory that describes classical gravity), time is malleable-clocks located at different places in a gravitational field tick at different rates. Physics has a time problem: In quantum mechanics, time is universal and absolute, continuously ticking forward as interactions occur between particles. But the researchers say that atomic clocks could be used to indirectly confirm their model’s predictions. This value lies well below the shortest ticks of today’s best atomic clocks, making it unmeasurable. ×Ī trio of theorists has modeled time as a universal quantum oscillator and found an upper bound of 1 0 − 3 3 seconds for the oscillator’s period. A new theory proposes that time is a fundamental property of the Universe governed by an oscillator that interacts with all matter and energy. Diuno/iStock/Getty Images The tick of the Universe.
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