Deconstructing Time

What causes the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom?

“Hank, why does this even matter?”

Right? I know. But please bear with me a bit longer, and the the story will unfold.

Deconstructing, or defining the players in this event define time, or more precisely, 1/9,192,631,770 of a second, or:

“By definition, radiation produced by the transition between the two hyperfine ground states of cesium (in the absence of external influences such as the Earth’s magnetic field) has a frequency of exactly 9,192,631,770 Hz.”

Hz simply means one wave cycle per second. So the cesium 133 outer electron energy, as it goes from one state to its other state, has 9,192,631,770 cycles in one second, or Hz.

Radiation produced? What?

Does the production of radiation from this event require an input? If so, what keeps this state of Cesium 133 cycling?

“Whoa, wait a minute…, if the cycle changes, what happens to time?”

So what exactly is going on at this fraction of a second?

I’ll try to be brief, respecting your time. Energy is fed to a cesium 133 atom, which not unlike a video stream takes time. This process is NOT instantaneous, which is part of the point. That new energy introduced to the cesium 133 atom is absorbed by its outer electron, which with this addition of energy is even more excited than it was prior to the introduction of this new energy, until that little electron cloud just can’t handle any more energy and excitement, and then, BOOM, that electron releases energy, or radiates energy, as the electron falls back to its normal energy level. It is the frequency of the energy of the microwave photon released between these two states that is measured, the radiated energy has a fixed frequency of 9,192,631,770 Hz because that little cesium atom outer electron can only bounce between two energy states, and that difference in energy state is exactly 9,192,631,770 Hz.

“When hit with a laser, the single electron in a cesium atom’s outermost shell will cycle back and forth between two states — known as a hyperfine transition.”

That event, the resulting energy frequency or number of waves represented by that frequency being equal to 9,192,631,770 waves per second, is the measure upon which we define a second.

Zoom WAY out and let’s review, and get to the point:

• The idea of measuring change was applied to a physical event, a day, a year, so that words representing a consistent cadence of change could be used as a standard for communication, the idea of communicating time. In 1967 scientists refined the definition of a unit of change to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom, as a fraction of a second, refining the word “second” we use today. Why refine the definition of a second? The refinement was made to improve the accuracy of shared communication of time with a precision of 1 second in 1/4 million years!
• Will the definition of time change again, at some point in the future? “In 2016, German researchers proposed an even better atomic clock, one based on the element strontium, and which uses optical light, rather than microwave emissions for calibration. Strontium cycles much faster than cesium does, and that would make such an atomic clock even more precise by giving researchers even more data points to work with.”
• Time, therefore, doesn’t exist in the physical world, and this is the Big AH-HAH, yet does exist in our shared vocabulary as a descriptor for measuring change, precisely the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the cesium 133 atom. “What does this mean to spacetime if time doesn’t exist in the physical world, if only change exists?” Exactly!
• We might want to deconstruct “change”, the answer to “why does it matter?” which is perhaps the subject for another time. :-)

And you may be saying you know nothing about that which you write! And, with a chuckle I respond, “So true,” hence the references. And now that we agree on that, let’s discuss the validity of the references.

Cheers.

References:

http://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae99.cfm

Electromagnetic radiation - Wikipedia

CESIUM ATOMIC CLOCKS

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/129299/a-question-about-atomic-clocks

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/acloc.html

Cesium Standard, Wikipedia, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesium_standard

How Atomic Clocks Work

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2018/01/18/second-cesium-atom/#.WmOTCVQ-fJw

How does one arrive at the exact number of cycles of radiation a cesium-133 atom makes in order to…

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