The world’s most precise atomic clock has confirmed that the time dilation predicted by Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity works on the scale of millimetres.
Physicists have been unable to unite quantum mechanics – a theory that describes matter at the smallest scales – with general relativity, which predicts the behaviour of objects at the largest cosmic scales, including how gravity bends space-time. Because gravity is weak over small distances, it is hard to measure relativity on small scales.
But atomic clocks, which count seconds by measuring the frequency of radiation emitted when electrons around an atom change energy states, can detect these minute gravitational effects.
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