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Submission + - First Nuclear Clocks Start Ticking in Vienna and Beijing (phys.org)

Submitted by necro81
necro81 writes: Two groups, one in Vienna and one in Beijing, have successfully demonstrated the world's first nuclear clocks. Standard atomic clocks, like the caesium clocks that define the second, operate by observing the transition of electrons between different orbits about the nucleus. The resulting radiation is usually in the microwave range, and can produce clocks accurate to one second in 100 billion years.

Nuclear clocks go a step further, and probe energy transitions within the nucleus itself. Nuclei can arrange their protons and neutrons into different configurations, called isomers. The isomer with the lowest energy is the one usually found; higher-energy ones are only metastable and decay quickly. Usually it takes serious energy — x-rays and gamma rays — to excite a nucleus into a higher-energy arrangement. It so happens that thorium-229 can be excited using UV light with a wavelength of 148 nm — just within the capabilities of some exotic lasers.

It's still been quite a challenge. For one thing, Th-229 is not found in nature; it must be extracted from the decay chain of uranium-235. The Beijing team used just a microgram mixed in a crystal of calcium fluoride.

Although these prototype nuclear clocks are not yet more accurate than existing atomic clocks (one second in millions, rather than billions, of years), they show the way towards what may be possible. Because the energy transition is in the nucleus, rather than the electron cloud, it is less susceptible to outside disturbances like magnetic fields. And the fundamental frequency is much higher (five orders of magnitude), which should yield more precise timing. This development could lead to smaller and more reliable time standards across the world (and solar system).

Comment Re:We already tried this (Score 1) 246

by pjt33 (#66366258) Attached to: Canadian Analysis: Permanent Daylight Saving Harms Sleep and Mental Health

The problem comes with hardware which doesn't have a way (or, at least, a user-friendly way) to update its locale data. I recall having problems a decade or so ago with discrepancies between two computers because one of them hadn't been updated with the then-very-recent changes to Chilean law about summer time and the other one had.

Comment Re:Summary ... (Score 1) 246

by pjt33 (#66366238) Attached to: Canadian Analysis: Permanent Daylight Saving Harms Sleep and Mental Health

But maybe an authoritarian dictatorship isn't a great example. Then turn your eyes to France and Spain.

On a point of order... Spain was in GMT until an authoritarian dictator decided that being in the same timezone as Nazi Germany would be convenient. France changed when it was occupied by Nazi Germany. Where you arguably get away with the examples is that there is a question as to why they haven't changed back.

Submission + - Wisconsin U–Madison Prof Francis Halzen named 2026 Nobel laureate in physi (wisc.edu)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: Halzen is the principal investigator of the NSF IceCube Neutrino Observatory, the world’s largest — and perhaps strangest — telescope. The U.S. National Science Foundation-funded observatory is operated by an international collaboration of scientists led by the Wisconsin IceCube Particle Astrophysics Center based at UW–Madison.

Embedded in a cubic kilometer of Antarctic ice, IceCube uses thousands of light sensors to survey the universe for neutrinos, nearly massless particles that rarely interact with other matter. Neutrinos provide information about the workings of black holes, galaxies and other objects in the cosmos.

“IceCube is like no other telescope in the world,” says UW–Madison interim Chancellor Eric M. Wilcots. “And there is no other scientist quite like Francis Halzen, whose idea to create a neutrino detector under almost a mile of ice has led to a remarkable multinational and multi-institutional scientific collaboration and a fundamental shift in how we think about the universe.”

Comment Re:Public by Design (Score 1) 18

by pjt33 (#66365330) Attached to: Hackers Steal 8 Million Citizens' Records From Danish Government Database

There are use cases you're not covering. Last month I needed a photo of my sister-in-law's ID card to prove that I'd correctly transcribed her address (bureaucrats don't always understand that other countries do things like addresses differently) when applying for a document to make it easier for her to visit. If she'd had to be there in person we'd have had a circular dependency.

Comment Re:So what's it good for? (Score 2) 72

by smooth wombat (#66365226) Attached to: OpenAI Is Adding Text Watermarking In ChatGPT and Codex
I don't think that makes the document any less your own than having a human copy editor conduct a similar review which has been done since forever.

Which is what I've been saying as well. If all you're doing is asking for suggestions to something you have already written, using AI is no different than using a human editor. It's your work. It's been written. You're just looking for advice on how to improve it.

This is completely different than people who tell AI what they want and it does all the work.

Comment Multiple methods vs 1. (Score 2) 86

Humans use multiple methods of thought.
Faith: (Appeal to Authority)
Science: (Scientific Method)
Formal Logic (If x then y)
Bias: (Appeal to previous examples)

While AI is built on Formal Logic, it does not use it. Instead it uses Bias entirely. It has no faith and does not understand or use the scientific method.

Submission + - Pneumonic plague outbreak hits Siberia as lab worker, 28, dies (hotair.com)

Submitted by schwit1
schwit1 writes: A suspected plague outbreak has erupted in Russia — killing a young lab worker, forcing nearly 200 people into isolation and triggering accusations that Vladimir Putin’s regime is trying to keep the infection’s possible spread under wraps.

The alarm was raised in Siberia after a worker at an anti-plague laboratory died of the disease, which killed tens of millions in the medieval Black Death, according to a report from The Moscow Times.

Anna Popova, who heads Russia’s public-health watchdog, then rushed 2,600 miles from Moscow to the Irkutsk region as authorities quarantined a hospital and placed scores of people who had come into contact with the victim under medical observation.

"FSB units accompanying ambulances transporting people who had been in contact with [lab tech] Shipilova for medical examination," as per local news. This is significant. FSB is Russia's domestic security / counterintelligence service, tasked w/implementing the national security of Russia." (Its predecessor was the KGB). This suggests quarantine was not voluntary.

It also means Russian authorities are treating the lab accident and plague outbreak as a national security issue, involving a lot more than routine public health.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fx.com%2FAnnieJacobsen%2Fst...

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