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Scientists Use Spinning Neutron Stars to Calibrate Atomic Clocks

The European Space Agency is synching up atomic clocks with distant, rapidly spinning neutron stars, called pulsars, according to a release.

The effort, led by a private company called GMV alongside the University of Manchester and the UK's NPL National Physical Laboratory, is used to advance the clocks used in the Galileo global satellite navigation system—like GPS, but for Europe. The pulsar-based "PulChron" system combines the long-term stability of pulsar measurements with the precision of vibrating atoms to create more accurate clocks.

[...] Though interesting on their own, scientists now use the regular spins of pulsars as tools, observing arrays of them to hunt for gravitational waves, for example. And their precise frequency makes them excellent time-keepers.

A clock, after all, is just something that ticks with well-understood intervals that can be used for measuring time. PulChron sources its measurements from five radio telescopes comprising the European Pulsar Timing Array, which observe 18 pulsars. Atomic clocks, meanwhile, come up with a characteristic frequency that makes up their "tick" by perfectly tuning a laser to excite an atom, then translating the laser's frequency into the usable interval.

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