Claire Bowman* reports on an Adelaide University invention — a clock that only loses a second every 40 million years.
Scientists from the University of Adelaide have been awarded a Eureka Prize for the development of a clock that can do far more than tell the time.
Eureka Prizes are awarded for excellence in research and innovation, leadership, science engagement and school science.
The Adelaide team won the Defence Science and Technology Prize for Outstanding Science in Safeguarding Australia.
The winning clock, known as the Sapphire Clock (pictured) is the result of 20 years of research on the part of South Australian scientists.
Its official title is the Cryogenic Sapphire Oscillator and it is 1,000 times more precise than anything that exists commercially.
How precise is that? Well, in the next 40 million years, the Sapphire Clock will lose or gain only one second.
The clock will have more uses than just telling the time, as the pure ultra-low noise signal it generates may be useful in systems we use every day like GPS and radar navigation, which require accurate frequency and timing signals.
Team leader and Director of the university’s Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing, Andre Luiten said its unparalleled precision offered many possibilities.
One was the potential for an upgrade of the Jindalee Over-The-Horizon Radar Network (JORN) which monitors aircraft and ships off Australia’s northern approaches.
“The sensitivity to detect objects at great distances depends on the purity of the reference clock frequencies,” Professor Luiten said.
“The Sapphire Clock, with its incredible purity, can generate signals 1,000 times more pure than the technology currently in use.”
He said if JORN had access to better signals then it will be able to see smaller objects, travelling slower, at much greater distances — and that would mean keeping Australia safer.
The Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing at the University of Adelaide and start-up company, Cryoclock Pty Ltd are jointly responsible for creating this high-tech timepiece.
*Claire Bowman is a freelance writer and public relations consultant. She tweets at @BowmanClaire
This article first appeared at www.techly.com.au.
