Related papers: Time in the 10,000-Year Clock
Atomic clocks have been transformational in science and technology, leading to innovations such as global positioning, advanced communications, and tests of fundamental constant variation. Next-generation optical atomic clocks can extend…
A new idea for a binary clock is presented. It displays the time using a triangular array of 15 bits. It is shown that such a geometric, triangular arrangement is only possible because our system of time divisions is based on a sexagesimal…
Today's most accurate clocks are based on laser spectroscopy of electronic transitions in single trapped ions and feature fractional frequency uncertainties below $1\times10^{-18}$. Scaling these systems to multiple, simultaneously…
Continuous clocks, i.e. the clocks that measure time in a continuous manner, are regarded as an essential component of sensing technology. Precision and recurrence time are two basic features of continuous clocks. In this paper, in the…
A fundamental description of time can be consistent not only with the usual monotonic behavior but also with a periodic physical clock variable, coupled to the degrees of freedom of a system evolving in time. Generically, one would in fact…
Circadian oscillation provides selection advantages through synchronization to the daylight cycle. However, a reliable clock must be designed through two conflicting properties: entrainability to synchronize internal time with periodic…
The solar luminosity in the visible changes at the 10-3 level, following an 11 years period. In X-rays, which should not be there, the amplitude varies 100000 times stronger, making their mysterious origin since the discovery in 1938 even…
The evolution of the solar activity comprises, apart from the well-known 11-year cycle, various temporal scales ranging from months up to the secondary cycles known as mid-term oscillations. Its nature deserves a physical explanation. In…
The bloom clock is a space-efficient, probabilistic data structure designed to determine the partial order of events in highly distributed systems. The bloom clock, like the vector clock, can autonomously detect causality violations by…
The observation that the shadows of objects change during the course of the day and also for a fixed time during a year led curious minds to realize that the Sun could be used as a timekeeper. However, the daily motion of the Sun has some…
Galileo noted in the 16th century that the period of oscillation of a pendulum is almost independent of the amplitude. However, such a pendulum is damped by air friction. The latter may be viewed as resulting from air molecules getting in…
The passage of time is tracked by counting oscillations of a frequency reference, such as Earth's revolutions or swings of a pendulum. By referencing atomic transitions, frequency (and thus time) can be measured more precisely than any…
As humanity aspires to explore the solar system and investigate distant worlds such as the Moon, Mars, and beyond, there is a growing need to establish and broaden coordinate time references that depend on the rate of standard clocks.…
Solar activity is a process driven by many independent but interconnected phenomena. Although the 11-year cycle is the result of operation of the dynamo mechanism, the cause of longer secular variations is not clear. In search of such a…
Mechanical clocks consist of a pendulum and a clockwork that translates the pendulum period to displayed time. The most advanced clocks utilize optical transitions in atoms in place of the pendulum and an optical frequency comb generated by…
In the last ten years extraordinary results in time and frequency metrology have been demonstrated. Frequency-stabilization techniques for continuous-wave lasers and femto-second optical frequency combs have enabled a rapid development of…
We investigate an optomechanical system as a model of an autonomous mechanical pendulum clock in the quantum regime, whose operation relies only on incoherent (thermal) resources. The escapement of the clock, the mechanism that translates…
Recently invented and demonstrated, optical lattice clocks hold great promise for improving the precision of modern timekeeping. These clocks aim at the 10^-18 fractional accuracy, which translates into a clock that would neither lose or…
The solar magnetic field, thought to be generated by the motion of plasma within the Sun, alternates on the order of 11-year cycles and is incompletely understood. Industries rely on accurate forecasts of solar activity, but can solar…
Time delays due to signal latency, computational complexity, and sensor-denied environments, pose a critical challenge in both engineered and biological control systems. In this work, we investigate biologically inspired strategies to…