On Sat, Jun 14, 2025 at 11:20 PM Alan Grayson <[email protected]> wrote:
On Saturday, June 14, 2025 at 6:07:46 PM UTC-6 Brent Meeker wrote: > *> How do you think atomic clocks (the standard for the second) keep time?* On Sat, Jun 14, 2025 at 11:20 PM Alan Grayson <[email protected]> wrote: *> Atoms have structure* *But electrons have no structure, and the decay of an electron from a high energy orbit to a lower energy orbit is what an atomic clock uses to keep time, so they really should be called electron clocks. How does an electron know when it's time to emit a photon and move to a lower orbit? Nobody knows, but we don't need to know to make a clock out of an electron if it is near the nucleus of a cesium atom.* > *> and definite transition frequencies, * *And muons have a definite decay frequency. * * > Moreover, since you're the one who believes the muon has a clock, the > burden is yours to define what it is, * *I've already defined what a clock is, it's a thing that measures time. And I have no obligation to explain how a muon clock works, I just need to demonstrate that it exists. In a similar way our ancestors didn't know why a sundial could measure time, all they needed to know is that it did. * *>How does observing a decay translate into reading a clock? AG* > *Huh? We know from experiment that the mean lifetime of a muon at rest is 2.1969811 ± 0.0000022 microseconds, and you don't understand how it would be possible to use that fact to make a very accurate clock? * *John K Clark See what's on my new list at Extropolis <https://groups.google.com/g/extropolis>* 7gu -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/CAJPayv3c0xA7xga_t8YENGrjdihFvOLriY91zC0%3Dz51U0xwSPQ%40mail.gmail.com.
