• pelya@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    Never heard of such clock. You’ll also need to regularly recalibrate your radioactive sample, because it decreases in weight over time. And you need a Geiger counter to measure that radiation, which is also not super precise.

    A regular crystal oscillator seems better.

    • 🍉 DrRedOctopus 🐙🍉@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      I went to double check, because I know that’s how atomic clocks work, or maybe there is a now tech I was not aware of but atomic clocks always worked by looking at atomic decay…

      WTF

      I Swear WTF

      I was 100% completely and absolutely wrong. That is not how they have ever worked, and I was sure of that. Like I have a STEM PhD (not physics) and I was sure I looked how they worked at some point and learned it.

      But I was extremely wrong, like how TF did I get that idea from and why the fuck have I held on it. Did I dream it? Did someone told me that as a joke and I fell for it? was I learning about decay and half life and I ask myself if that is how they worked and instead of checking I just remembered that as an explanation and not a question???

      I feel like a Mandela effect, I would be more conforted knowing that I jumped to a parallel dimension. God. Now I am nervous what other concepts I am 100% confident about yet am full of shit.

      Thanks for correcting me, going to have some serious existential crisis, adios

      • pelya@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        Wow, that was an intense self-diacovery.

        They do use radioactive decay in archeology to measure time, but the precision is within a thousand years.