Caption: Charles Townes with an early
maser in 1955, [c] AP
25, 1955, file photo, Charles Hard Townes, Columbia University professor and Nobel laureate, explains his invention the
maser during a news conference in New York City.
The original aim of the project was not to build a
maser, but to explore how to use double quantum dots -- which are two quantum dots joined together -- as quantum bits, or qubits, the basic units of information in quantum computers.
Most of the applications of
masers are as amplifiers, says Oxborrow.
Unbeknownst to Townes, several other researchers had begun contemplating similar ideas about a
maser. At the University of Maryland in College Park, Joe Weber had published a short paper proposing to use stimulated emission as an amplifier of radiation.
Many of the
masers existed long enough for their motions to be tracked across the sky and along our line of sight, yielding their 3-D motions through space.
Johnson and the
MaSeR management team have identified composite auto parts, blister pack packaging, wire and cable and other composite materials as potential infeed for
MaSeRs production lines.
Long term performance is equal to UTC at 5x[10.sup.-14] offset over 3...33 days as measured against an ensemble of active hydrogen
masers and NIST + NPL traceable by satellite time transfer techniques.
It is the first time the two observatories have managed to observe the electric waves, called
masers, which were emitted by a cloud of silicon monoxide gas surrounding a VY star in the Great Dog constellation.
A post-processed time scale, involving an ensemble of five hydrogen
masers, has been developed by a NIST scientist in Boulder to serve as a reference for comparing primary frequency standards.
VSOP will be looking at two main groups of radio sources: active galaxies and
masers.
Megamasers, as the name suggests, have a much higher luminosity, and can be over 100 million times brighter than the
masers found in galaxies like the Milky Way.
