![]() ![]() Charged ions can be trapped with relatively weak electric fields. NPL is developing optical clocks based on single trapped ions of strontium and ytterbium. In future, optical clocks could even lead to the SI unit of time, the second, being redefined. These include quantum sensing, synchronisation of high-speed networks, space science and tests of fundamental physical theories. Optical atomic clocks have many potential applications. We are also developing compact and portable systems, to support a range of quantum technologies that will enable precision measurements beyond the laboratory environment. This is approximately two orders of magnitude better than the current caesium microwave primary standards. NPL is carrying out leading-edge optical clock research to achieve fractional frequency uncertainties of 1 part in 10 18. At the time of the Cuban missile crisis, the hands were at seven minutes to midnight, but the Bulletin’s board decided not to move them despite the crisis because by the time it came to make the decision, the near catastrophe appeared to have given Washington and Moscow fresh impetus to work towards risk reduction and arms control.Developing the next generation of optical atomic clocks The closest the clock came at the height of the cold war was two minutes to midnight in 1953 after the first detonation of a hydrogen bomb. When the Doomsday Clock was set at 100 seconds to midnight in 2020, it was then a record and the Bulletin’s scientists said at the time it was driven by the risk of civil collapse in the event of nuclear weapons use and the climate crisis in an “profoundly unstable” point in history. ![]() And so we should do everything we can to support Ukraine in that.” ![]() “US military assistance to Ukraine may complicate those efforts, but … I think is essential for the long-term risks of nuclear war, nuclear proliferation, that Ukraine is able to resist the invasion and repel Russian forces. “The US and Russia have a strong shared interest in avoiding nuclear war and in minimising nuclear risks and we should be able to pursue this,” Fetter said. “The possibility that the conflict could spin out of anyone’s control remains high,” the statement went on, adding that the Russian invasion had placed the Chornobyl and Zaporizhzhia nuclear reactor sites in the midst of a war zone, in violation of international protocols and risked the “widespread release of radioactive materials”.Īt the clock announcement, Steve Fetter, the dean of the graduate school and professor of public policy at the University of Maryland, was asked by a journalist from the Russian state-run news agency, Tass, whether the western provision of modern armaments to Ukraine, potentially including tanks and fighter jets, had an impact on arms control and the risks of nuclear war. And worst of all, Russia’s thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons remind the world that escalation of the conflict – by accident, intention, or miscalculation – is a terrible risk.” A statement accompanying the decision said: “Russia’s war on Ukraine has raised profound questions about how states interact, eroding norms of international conduct that underpin successful responses to a variety of global risks. ![]()
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