The name "alkali metal group element resonance timing technology" sounds a bit lofty, and many judges with a poor science foundation may be intimidated.

But if we talk about another popular name for this thing, "atomic clock", basically junior high school students have heard of it.

The previous name just puts the characteristics of the technical route on the topic: atomic clocks generally use the natural resonance period of the outermost electron of an element after being excited to jump to the high-energy electron layer and naturally fall back to the low-energy layer to achieve accurate timekeeping.

In order to achieve this purpose, the atoms selected are generally elements in the natural state with only one electron in the outermost shell, that is, the "alkali metal group elements" taught in the first year of high school chemistry class, hydrogen, lithium, sodium, potassium, rubidium, cesium, francium.

Theoretically, the more electrons in the number of layers and the more active the outermost electrons of the element, the faster the resonant frequency, and the higher the accuracy of the atomic clock. Therefore, hydrogen atomic clocks are generally the least accurate in the family, but they are cheaper.

When it comes to the highest cesium atom, the natural definition is "the time for the outermost electron to make 9,192,631,770 electron transitions, which is 1 second", which shows how high the accuracy is. (Francium is a highly radioactive element with a half-life of only 22 minutes, so it is basically useless.) So up to cesium)

Seeing this, some Earth readers will be surprised: the earthlings made hydrogen atomic clocks in the 60s for the Apollo moon landing, and rubidium/cesium were also made in the 70s and 80s. Why is Blue Hole Star's level in this field so spicy?

In the final analysis, the development of Blue Hole Star aerospace is slow, and it is all driven by commercial satellites, so there was a hydrogen atomic clock in the late 70s. Follow-up commercial satellites do not have much improvement in accuracy requirements, so they rely on tinkering to improve accuracy, and do not plan to spend a lot of money to continue to engage in intergenerational innovation.

The Department of Physical Chemistry of Tunghai University is also considered to be the top in China. It is one of the few universities in China that still puts the promotion of this technology on the scientific research agenda.

It's just that since five or six years ago, the state has not allocated enough budget anyway, and there have been no venture capitalists and entrepreneurs to exchange money for results.

This is the current situation that Zhou Xuan faced when he came into contact with these fields.

……

Therefore, based on the understanding of the current situation of the industry's demand, Zhou Xuan's first reaction when he heard his cousin mention GPS was this:

"Of course, I've heard of this project, isn't it the global positioning system of international cooperation, and the leading party is Oceania. But how much higher is the accuracy requirement of this thing for atomic clocks than other projects? But for such a tall project, how much more involvement can we have in the technology that a small fund like ours can invest in?"

The GPS project on Earth was carried out by the United States itself, because it was initially completed in 94, and it happened to be the project of the "Star Wars Project" during the presidency of Reagan when it was carried out.

But the GPS on the Blue Hole Star is a model of global cooperation, because the Blue Hole Star has not had a Cold War, and there is no strong military confrontation range, and Oceania countries also want to find some wronged people to share the cost - this model is very similar to the International Space Station on Earth around 2000. That project was established in the 90s after the collapse of the USSR in an atmosphere that seemed to be a global unity.

Oriental countries have invested 5% in GPS projects, and in the future, they can exchange for the right to use commercial data for shared positioning systems, and other countries have also invested a few percentage points each. The Oceania family invested 60%, but they can monopolize the right to use military data, which is roughly such a cooperation model.

However, in fact, the Eastern Kingdom still has more pursuits, and secretly has a "Southern Cross Navigation System" plan that temporarily stays on paper. At present, I am willing to cooperate with the Ocean Country, but also because I am still poor and the technology is backward, so I will temporarily follow behind to accumulate some experience and share some technical information.

Of course, these are all absolutely secret, and neither Zhou Xuan nor Gu Play knows about the existence of the "Southern Cross Project".

Faced with his cousin's technical questions, Gu Wan's answer was also very simple: "The wood of hugging starts from the end." Don't be afraid to understand the project because it's too big. Any great project can be dismantled into many small goals one by one, which is the space that small scientific research teams and small technology capital can operate.

Specific to GPS, once the accuracy of the atomic clock is improved, the core indicators of the entire system can be greatly improved - to be exact, the accuracy of the timer can be increased by several times, and the positioning accuracy can be improved by several times. ”

For a satellite positioning system, the core competitiveness is, of course, positioning accuracy.

Therefore, as soon as he heard that the new atomic clock could actually improve the positioning accuracy, Zhou Xuan immediately flashed a greedy light in his eyes.

"How is this achieved in principle?How can timing accuracy be converted into positioning accuracy?And how did you come up with this?" Zhou Xuan rubbed his hands and couldn't help but ask.

At the same time, he was a little skeptical of his cousin's ability.

"Don't forget, I chose to send the National Physics Olympiad team. Sometimes, if you have a good foundation and are good at association, you can understand it. Gu Yu had to explain the source of his knowledge first, so that his cousin would not suspect that he was possessed by aliens, and then he began to explain the technical principles.

"As for the principle, it's actually very simple - GPS provides the coordinates of a ground signal source based on the Samsung ranging method. Therefore, the accuracy of the step of 'measuring the distance between a satellite and a terrestrial source' determines the accuracy of positioning.

In fact, it is based on the electromagnetic wave communication time multiplied by the speed of light, which is equal to the round-trip distance - of course, in terms of engineering, the dielectric constant and relative permeability of the atmosphere must also be considered, that is, the formula of s=(ε*μ)^0.5 is substituted, because this is not the whole process of propagation in a vacuum.

In other traditional scientific research fields and the field of aerospace remote sensing, there is actually no difference between an atomic clock that is one second slower than a few hundred thousand years and an atomic clock that is one second slower than one second in 3 million years. However, in the problem of speed of light ranging, the error is put to a maximum, because the speed of light is too fast, about 300,000 kilometers per second, so the error of 1 millisecond is 300 kilometers, and 1 is 300 meters.

After a hydrogen atomic clock that is only 1 second slower in hundreds of thousands of years, after being used in space without calibration for several months or even a year or two, the cumulative error may be a few subtle, and the corresponding positioning error may be several hundred meters.

And if the cesesium atomic clock is developed as a ranging timer for GPS satellites, the error can be reduced to fifty or sixty meters, and in the future, as long as the cesium atomic clock further digs into the potential, this accuracy can be improved - this will find a huge possibility of commercialization?

If you think about it, there are so many Internet food delivery taxis and e-commerce at present. According to the current GPS accuracy planning, it can only be used for military and scientific research remote sensing positioning, and there is no imagination space for further service e-commerce and even the Internet in the future. And once the accuracy can be increased by an order of magnitude, or even more, the future scope of application is simply unimaginable. ”

Listening to his cousin's interpretation in such a simple way, Zhou Xuan suddenly felt that the original incomparably tall project actually had an operation space in which a small person like him also participated.

It's amazing.

So what, we can't do those grand things, but we can also dismantle one small goal after another, and invest money to solve one of the small goals first.

And it is a small goal to enhance the core competitiveness.

"It's incredible...... When you say this, it seems like a matter of piercing a layer of window paper, but why didn't so many scientists and technocrats from all over the world think of it? I always felt that something was wrong. Even you can think of it. Zhou Xuan felt that it was so smooth that he couldn't help but doubt himself.

Gu Yu has no answer to this question, so he can only deduce and analyze a wave: "Well, I think it's because people who understand business don't understand technology, and people who understand technology don't understand business, which leads to some lights going dark - the Oceanic side only engaged in GPS for military positioning at the beginning, and they didn't think about using satellites to directly guide missiles, which is only used for large-scale enemy search or search and rescue positioning, so the positioning accuracy of a few hundred meters is enough."

If you think about it, if something happens to an airplane or a submarine, and you have to send reinforcements to search and rescue, even if the positioning error is a few hundred meters, it doesn't matter, because the search and rescue plane can be found with an error of several hundred meters when it arrives there and takes a condescending look.

However, the business community, especially the Internet + industry, can develop the demand for precise positioning in the future, which cannot be satisfied by a few hundred meters error, because the two application scenarios are different.

NASA scientists don't understand how much precision internet entrepreneurs need and how much extra money they are willing to pay in exchange for improved accuracy. Internet entrepreneurs don't know how much more it costs to improve a little accuracy, and the poor communication and asymmetry in this may create an opportunity for us to pick up leaks. ”

This statement made Zhou Xuan feel the same way: "This is ...... Not to mention how the scientists of the Oceania countries dare to speak, just the experts and professors I saw at our Tunghai University are called one who dares to speak. The trial production cost of a cesium atom experimental machine dares to quote millions of dollars, and as for the overall experimental expenses, it is not accurate, at least tens of millions of dollars to start. ”

(Note: The U.S. dollar is the common name for the currency unit of the Oceania Nation, and the scientific name is "Oceanic Dollar.") The reason why it is so commonly known is only because the money of Oceania is printed more beautifully, don't think about it. ）

Zhou Xuan originally thought that the scientists' offer was too high, but in fact he did ask for this price. Compared with hydrogen atomic clocks, heavy alkali metal element clocks have many additional new technical bottlenecks, such as the need to use "atomic fountain" technology. To completely overcome these difficulties, tens of millions of dollars of investment must be required.

The ascension from a hydrogen atomic clock to a heavy alkali metal element clock is not linear, but a bit like "when you want to build an aircraft with a top speed of 900 kilometers, you can continue to tinker and dig out the potential on a full-fledged piston propeller aircraft", but when you want to build a supersonic aircraft, no matter how much you tinker and optimize, you have to break through jet technology.

The "atomic fountain" technology used in the heavy alkali metal element clock is equivalent to the barrier between the piston and the jet.

The initial combat effectiveness of the jet is not necessarily as powerful as the peak piston machine, which is also the reason why everyone tends to run in small steps and iterate quickly when measured by pure commercial considerations, but is unwilling to make intergenerational breakthroughs.

After all, there are not many poisonous dishes who are so crazy as the head of state and do not consider the cost performance of allocating scientific research resources.

Business, or plagiarism and micro-innovation are more money-grabbing.