A measurement of 10 MHz down to 10 uHz

[dannyf]

I think you are probing beyond the envelop of the state of the art measurement technology that mankind has to offer now.

[uncle_bob]

. There is already a lot of gear out in the market that will make these measurements.

I wonder what they are... There is an area of research and application of crystal resonators frequency shift called Quartz Crystal Microbalance where they measure shift in frequency caused by depositing molecules on the surface of the crystal (change in mass), and it seems it is a challenge to reliably measure the shift with better than 0.01 Hz resolution. BTW, i recommend OP to read about QCM, there may be a few good ideas to pick up from there.

Hi

Well the one next to me on the bench here is a Symmetricom 3120A. It will do the job quite nicely. They have many other instruments (as do others) that also will measure the expected impact of a 60KV shift.

Truth in lending, I don't work for Symmetricom. I did not work on the 3120A at any point in time. I'm just a happy customer. Yes, there is *slightly* more to the story, but it's not relevant.

Bob

Warranty void above 10 kV... 

Hi

Awww shucks .....There goes that Nobel Prize.

=====

Indeed a *very* bit part of running this experiment would be isolating and protecting everything. That's true at 5KV, it is even more true if you bop up to 60KV. You also need to very carefully isolate your measurement gear. That's not just for safety. You also want to keep leakage from messing up your measurement. Things like isolation transformers for your RF signal may be a bit interesting to design.

Bob

[uncle_bob]

I think you are probing beyond the envelop of the state of the art measurement technology that mankind has to offer now.

Hi

That just isn't true.

The initial statement wants to look for a 1x10^-12 frequency change. You can buy OCXO's on eBay that will have ADEV's in the 1x10^-13 vicinity. Those OCXO's were measured with very normal test gear. It is specialized gear, but it is not "un obtainable". The nice thing about the measurement gear is that it generally gets more accurate the longer the measurement. Something that does 1x10^-10 at 1 second (like a HP 53132) will do 1x10^-12 at 100 seconds or 1x10^-13 at 1,000 seconds. If you go with a 5370 or an SRS620, you start at 2x10^-11 and go from there. There are a *lot* of measurement techniques out there. NIST has very little doubt they can measure frequency down to 1x10^-15.

If you do as suggested in another post, take the voltage up from 5KV. That's quite do-able with a variety of gear. It is not gear I have siting here in the family room. It is stuff you can buy. 60KV was suggested. 100KV might be equally easy. Gear that went way above that was state of the art in ... errr ...1890. Having worked with one of those big old beasts, no I would *not* do it like they did it "back in the old days".

With a voltage of 100KV, you move your delta F up by a factor of 20. Now you are looking for 2x10^-11 and not 1x10^-12. That's frequency counter territory.

Do you want to do this as an AC measurement? Sure. Voltage up / voltage down / repeat is the way to do it. Maybe you can sweep in 10 seconds, maybe it will take longer to do a sweep. Monitor the frequency and the voltage. Look for a nice clean correlation. Keep things running for a few thousand cycles. Pile the data together and you have pretty good confidence.

The problem with this (looking at it as a sceptic) is *not* running the experiment. By the cost measures of modern physics, the cost to do this isn't even round off error. The problem is doing it in a way that proves what you find beyond any reasonable challenge. The test gear and OCXO's can do itheir part.

Bob

[dannyf]

Assuming the frequency deviation is stable and you can find a reference source equally stable, one way to measure such tiny frequency deviations is to measure changes in phase differenctials

[John Heath]

Great stuff guys. Thanks to all. I will tough on a few.

Quantum effects: In this case brute force toslink fiber is being used not single mode , lots and lots of photons to average out quantum effects.  Also the fiber cable is 20 feet at 10 MHz so dispersion should not be a concern ,, I hope.

Mikhailov effect:  A pretentious phrase such as "subquantum kinetics paradigm" is a red flag. They used mechanical wind up clocks , red flag confirmed. To give this balance many fine contributions to science have been made from the grass roots. Oliver Heaviside would be an  example.

Symmetricom 3120A: Thanks for the tip. I found a video by the gentleman that designed it.



TimFox: Yes just bump up the frequency. I hear you. It is already in the works. The fiber data receiver board for 2 10 MHz clocks also has a true fiber Y mixer to heterodyne the solid state laser carrier. This is done to verify that both the crystal clock and the laser carrier are experiencing the same time dilation at 5 K volts. Two different types of clocks , crystal / laser , experiencing the same time dilation is central to the credibility of VEPS project.  If that sounds complicated it is not. I should take a picture of it and post it here. One glance and you will see how simple it is . The real devil is in the details.

[uncle_bob]

Assuming the frequency deviation is stable and you can find a reference source equally stable, one way to measure such tiny frequency deviations is to measure changes in phase differenctials

Hi

Over any practical time interval, the data does show as phase deltas. There is not going to be enough time to count this out as full cycles. If you want to look directly at the phase, a DMTD setup is one way to do that.

Stability wise, it's just a matter of having the budget. There is no technical limit in that area.

Bob

[uncle_bob]

Symmetricom 3120A: Thanks for the tip. I found a video by the gentleman that designed it.

Hi

That is a very brief tour of part of what the box will do. There is a *lot* more in there (frequency, phase, ADEV, MDEV, TDEV etc) that are likely more useful than a straight phase noise measurement. I'm sounding like a sales guy ... sorry about that. The main value of the box is that it is at the low end of price range for that sort of box. They all are "ask for a quote sort of things. You can expect prices start around $10K (but who knows ...) and run up well past $150K for various boxes with this or that option.

Bob

[John Heath]

An extremely sensitive way to measure small fractional deviations of much, much higher frequency is the Mossbauer effect for gamma-ray frequencies.  See  http://www.mossbauer.info/mossbauer.html.
For example, this was used to measure the difference in gamma-ray photon energy (i.e., frequency) due to gravitation over the height of the tower on the Harvard campus.  When the emitting and target nuclei are each constrained by a crystalline lattice (e.g., Co-60 in bulk cobalt), the effective width of the resonant interaction is incredibly narrow and frequency shifts can be measured in the audio range.
If your effect is real, it should be visible with the source in one Faraday cage at high voltage, and the target in a grounded Faraday cage where you can do the measurement.

Hi Tim

Good stuff and cool link. This is similar to the Pound–Rebka experiment. They used a speaker for a hint of doppler effect to detect time dilation. As my experiment will be held to rather high standards I appreciate your constructive criticism. Better to hear it from you now before publishing. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound%E2%80%93Rebka_experiment

As to the second clock to compare there is an identical crystal oscillator that is kept at ground to compare with the Faraday clock. I did not feel it was necessary to have it in a Faraday cage but now that you bring it up it would not hurt. Most of the time the ground clock insin the freezer -10 C to shift its frequency up for a heterodyne difference frequency of 50 to 100 Hz. This puts it in range of my frequency counter that will resolve it down to 80.000,000 Hz. The last 2 zeros is the target for 10 uHz measurement. So far I am not even close to this target with stable reading in the 10 mHz range. By changing from a fiber Y mixer to a XOR mixer 20 DB gain in noise was achieved. This is not enough so it is more pacing the floor. power supply Ripple at 60 Hz is eliminated by using 9 volt rechargeable batteries then a 7805.

To address your larger concerns with overall concept. Why would a voltage frame of reference cause time to dilate? If Coulombs law is applied to the letter to a system then there as to be a net expansion of that system if there is a charge parity. Charge parity being number of + and - charges in a system. A bag of 10 - charges. It wants to expand. A bag of 10 + charges . It wants to expand. A bag of 5 - and 5 + charges . It wants to contract. A bag of 4 - and 6 + charges. It want to contract but not as much as 5 - and 5 + charges. From this a statement can be made that charge parity will cause expansion. If I expand the size of a clock it will tick slower to conserve momentum. By combining Coulomb's law with momentum conservation laws time should dilate if there is a offset in charge parity. The Faraday cage at 5 K volts is offsetting charge parity therefore the clock should change in frequency. This was theoretically predicted in around 1930 as an alternative  to general relativity's metric tensor.They were more concerned with event horizons and stuff like that but the basic idea was use Coulomb's law not the relative inertia of the system. I can did that link if you would like to have a look at it. I see by my clock that it is 1/4 to 7 . Another day starts.

[dannyf]

there is an identical crystal oscillator

I guess the question is how "identical" is this "identical" crystal oscillator is? is it sufficiently identical that allows reliable measurement of such small shift?

If I expand the size of a clock it will tick slower to conserve momentum.

Is momentum really conserved for the kind of study? For example, when an object moves through space/time where momentum is conserved, is its energy conserved too?

[uncle_bob]

there is an identical crystal oscillator

I guess the question is how "identical" is this "identical" crystal oscillator is? is it sufficiently identical that allows reliable measurement of such small shift?

Hi

IF you run a nice periodic AC signal as your high voltage, you will modulate the "victim" oscillator. All you really need to do is keep the reference oscillator from being modulated at the same time. Run the signal for a long time. Let any of the measurement gear take data. Once you have the data, very standard techniques can narrow down the bandwidth. The noise goes down as the bandwidth decreases. The signal stays the same.

On a practical basis, you likely need a slow sine wave. That equates to a fairly long test period. All of the techniques work the same way. It's done every time you flip on a GPS and get a signal.

Can you measure the effect? yes. Is it there in the first place? I'm still skeptical. The Nobel prize for this year appears to have already been won. You might consider putting off until next year. Just for reference, take a look at what sort of resolution they ran for the gravity wave experiment. The target here is massively easier to hit.

Bob

[John Heath]

there is an identical crystal oscillator

I guess the question is how "identical" is this "identical" crystal oscillator is? is it sufficiently identical that allows reliable measurement of such small shift?

If I expand the size of a clock it will tick slower to conserve momentum.

Is momentum really conserved for the kind of study? For example, when an object moves through space/time where momentum is conserved, is its energy conserved too?

Hi Dannyf

How identical are the two clocks. Not very identical. At room temperature for both crystal oscillators they are off by about 20 CPS. As room temperature changes by 5 C they can be off by as much as 15 to 25 Hz. Their temperature coefficients do not seem to be matching. However electrically they are identical with the same 7805 regulator , 9 volt rechargeable battery and layout on a small prototype board. . I posted a picture of one of the clocks. The other one in the Faraday cage is the same design. However you asked if it will allow for such a small measurement. The answer is I am not sure. The oscillators only have to be stable for 10 seconds as this is the rate that the Faraday cage  changes voltage from ground to 5 K volts. Is this enough with jitter noise and thermal drift for a 10 uHz. Not sure but having a lot of fun trying.

Is energy and momentum conserved. Good question. Energy conservation is a given as there is no free lunch for energy. Free energy is not possible , a big no no in physics. Is momentum conserved. All tests so far say yes. A spinning top is a good example. Is the top spinning relative to itself or the universe. Mach , the gentleman that Mach speed is named after , says yes it is relative to the entire universe. It seems he is right as strange as that sounds. This again comes from many tests made. Like they say you can not fight the numbers.

Thank you for taking an interest in  this.   

[nctnico]

IMHO it all comes down to filtering the noise from your data and see if the rate at which you change the high voltage pops up above the noise floor. I'd try and use much better crystal oscillators and regulators though to reduce thermal influences and noise.

[dannyf]

However electrically they are identical with the same 7805 regulator

The question you will need to ask here is that are those regulators "identical" to at least 10uHz / 10Mhz? Otherwise, they are NOT identical for purpose of yours experiment.

Energy conservation is a given as there is no free lunch for energy.

You may not assume to fast: think of red shift (aka photons through a gravitational field). is energy conserved there?

When we are talking about extremes (tiny space or huge distance), what we usually take for granted may no longer be true.

[dom0]

Conservation of energy in ART doesn't really makes sense, since it's a purely local phenomenon iirc.

[John Heath]

there is an identical crystal oscillator

I guess the question is how "identical" is this "identical" crystal oscillator is? is it sufficiently identical that allows reliable measurement of such small shift?

Hi

IF you run a nice periodic AC signal as your high voltage, you will modulate the "victim" oscillator. All you really need to do is keep the reference oscillator from being modulated at the same time. Run the signal for a long time. Let any of the measurement gear take data. Once you have the data, very standard techniques can narrow down the bandwidth. The noise goes down as the bandwidth decreases. The signal stays the same.

On a practical basis, you likely need a slow sine wave. That equates to a fairly long test period. All of the techniques work the same way. It's done every time you flip on a GPS and get a signal.

Can you measure the effect? yes. Is it there in the first place? I'm still skeptical. The Nobel prize for this year appears to have already been won. You might consider putting off until next year. Just for reference, take a look at what sort of resolution they ran for the gravity wave experiment. The target here is massively easier to hit.

Bob

Hi Bob

Well done. I know exactly what you mean. This would have a far better signal to noise somewhat like fine tuning a AM radio to one precise frequency.

You are skeptical and you should be as nothing has shown up yet. I log the data on a PC that can run all day. so far all I am seeing is big changes as the ambient temperature goes up and down . There is also a change of 1 cycle per second at 10 MHz that is synchronized with 5 K volt change. This is 100,000 times greater than it should be so clearly a mistake has been made. I suspect a small voltage gradient in the inner Faraday cage effecting the 5 volt regulator. The fiber cable leaving the inner Faraday cage has a voltage gradeint for sure so mabe more attention has to be payed to it. It can not be the crystal oscillator as it is in a hermetically sealed in a tiny metal box. That box is ground that is directly connected to the 5 K volt source.

You brought up gravity waves. I heard on the news they hit paydirt. Gravity waves detected for the first time in history. 

[uncle_bob]

there is an identical crystal oscillator

I guess the question is how "identical" is this "identical" crystal oscillator is? is it sufficiently identical that allows reliable measurement of such small shift?

If I expand the size of a clock it will tick slower to conserve momentum.

Is momentum really conserved for the kind of study? For example, when an object moves through space/time where momentum is conserved, is its energy conserved too?

Hi Dannyf

How identical are the two clocks. Not very identical. At room temperature for both crystal oscillators they are off by about 20 CPS. As room temperature changes by 5 C they can be off by as much as 15 to 25 Hz. Their temperature coefficients do not seem to be matching. However electrically they are identical with the same 7805 regulator , 9 volt rechargeable battery and layout on a small prototype board. . I posted a picture of one of the clocks. The other one in the Faraday cage is the same design. However you asked if it will allow for such a small measurement. The answer is I am not sure. The oscillators only have to be stable for 10 seconds as this is the rate that the Faraday cage  changes voltage from ground to 5 K volts. Is this enough with jitter noise and thermal drift for a 10 uHz. Not sure but having a lot of fun trying.

Is energy and momentum conserved. Good question. Energy conservation is a given as there is no free lunch for energy. Free energy is not possible , a big no no in physics. Is momentum conserved. All tests so far say yes. A spinning top is a good example. Is the top spinning relative to itself or the universe. Mach , the gentleman that Mach speed is named after , says yes it is relative to the entire universe. It seems he is right as strange as that sounds. This again comes from many tests made. Like they say you can not fight the numbers.

Thank you for taking an interest in  this.   

Hi

If you intend to simply measure one OCXO against the other, and not do a "delta" measurement, you will need a pair of hydrogen masers rather than OCXO's. You gain a *lot* with a modulated HV setup.

Bob

[TimFox]

One advantage to my suggestion to use the Mossbauer effect is that all Co-60 nuclei are completely identical, as no electronic components could be, and have negligible (if any) tempco.

[John Heath]

Hi Bob

I hear you. Hydrogen masers are a little out of my league. Afraid I will have to stick to crystals oscillators. I hear GPS disciplined oscillators are hitting the eBay market in the 100 dollar range , maybe?? One poster said he unplugging the antenna of such a devise and it stayed withing 4 mHz for hours  compared to an atomic clock Hmmm. Rather impressive. Maybe I should start doing science instead of just talking about it and buy one of these GPS disciplined clocks. In for a penny in for a pound sorta speak. Being a 66 year old fart the time to be real is now not later. 

[uncle_bob]

Hi Bob

I hear you. Hydrogen masers are a little out of my league. Afraid I will have to stick to crystals oscillators. I hear GPS disciplined oscillators are hitting the eBay market in the 100 dollar range , maybe?? One poster said he unplugging the antenna of such a devise and it stayed withing 4 mHz for hours  compared to an atomic clock Hmmm. Rather impressive. Maybe I should start doing science instead of just talking about it and buy one of these GPS disciplined clocks. In for a penny in for a pound sorta speak. Being a 66 year old fart the time to be real is now not later.

Hi

.... ok time for a mandatory disclosure ... I design GPSDO's for a living ...

There is no advantage to doing this with a GPSDO compared to a couple of OCXO's.

Bob

[John Heath]

You design GPSDOs , cool. I would like to tax you on some of the details of this especially the GPS interface software. For now you are saying a oven controlled crystal oscillator is all I need. I have 2 frequency counters both with oven controlled oscillators. An old Nixie tube Heath Kit model IB 1102 and a spify new Victor VC2000. Both have oven controlled oscillators. With a little fiddling I could bring a buffered sample of these oscillators out the back. The inner Faraday cage will have to be enlarged and 2 amp hour dry fit battery with car 12 volt to 120 AC adapter to keep the VC2000 running. No way with the Heath kit 1102 as that one is in the 40 to 50 watt range. Why did I not think of this before. Use the frequency counter OCOXs. There is a third virtual frequency counter app on my Samsung Android phone. Best frequency counter money can buy , free actually , but it is limited from 30 Hz to 20 KHz. However it makes up for this with by measuring 40 Hz or so down to 40.000,000 and stable provided the phone is not charging. This means that the Heath Kit and Victor OCOXs have to be offset from each other by at least 40 Hz. The crystal trimmers should have that much range on them. I have a good feeling about this. This will take days so please go on about GPSDOs. How did you get into this ? How hard are they to make? How does the GPS interface software translate into 1 pulse per second? Spare no details.

[John Heath]

Hi Bob

I hear you. Hydrogen masers are a little out of my league. Afraid I will have to stick to crystals oscillators. I hear GPS disciplined oscillators are hitting the eBay market in the 100 dollar range , maybe?? One poster said he unplugging the antenna of such a devise and it stayed withing 4 mHz for hours  compared to an atomic clock Hmmm. Rather impressive. Maybe I should start doing science instead of just talking about it and buy one of these GPS disciplined clocks. In for a penny in for a pound sorta speak. Being a 66 year old fart the time to be real is now not later.

[uncle_bob]

You design GPSDOs , cool. I would like to tax you on some of the details of this especially the GPS interface software. For now you are saying a oven controlled crystal oscillator is all I need. I have 2 frequency counters both with oven controlled oscillators. An old Nixie tube Heath Kit model IB 1102 and a spify new Victor VC2000. Both have oven controlled oscillators. With a little fiddling I could bring a buffered sample of these oscillators out the back. The inner Faraday cage will have to be enlarged and 2 amp hour dry fit battery with car 12 volt to 120 AC adapter to keep the VC2000 running. No way with the Heath kit 1102 as that one is in the 40 to 50 watt range. Why did I not think of this before. Use the frequency counter OCOXs. There is a third virtual frequency counter app on my Samsung Android phone. Best frequency counter money can buy , free actually , but it is limited from 30 Hz to 20 KHz. However it makes up for this with by measuring 40 Hz or so down to 40.000,000 and stable provided the phone is not charging. This means that the Heath Kit and Victor OCOXs have to be offset from each other by at least 40 Hz. The crystal trimmers should have that much range on them. I have a good feeling about this. This will take days so please go on about GPSDOs. How did you get into this ? How hard are they to make? How does the GPS interface software translate into 1 pulse per second? Spare no details.

Hi

Ok, well, first you will need some good state of the art OCXO's. You will spend some time shopping for them on eBay and sorting out what you get.. You have the option of either buying a few dozen and sorting to get one or buying a couple (at a much higher price) and sorting to get one. Either way it's a time and labor intensive process. You could also go out and buy a couple brand new with all the bells and whistles. That's likely to be an even bigger hassle (and could run you $10K to $20K each, just for the OCXO's).

There is no way to make the measurements with sufficient accuracy with the gear you have described. You will need to buy some much better instruments. You need to measure to 1x10^-13 at 1 second. The video you posted earlier shows an instrument that does this. There are others. In terms of cycles that would be 0.000001 Hz in one second. (unless I fat fingered a zero ) Think of it as a frequency counter that displays 14 digits and they all read nice and solid.

I'd budget something in the $10 to $30K range to get the project going.

Bob

[Vgkid]

This has gotten interesting.
Subscribed.

[DimitriP]

and could run you $10K to $20K each, just for the OCXO's).

When I started being in the market  for an OCXO (once in the market, you are always in the market!)
the most expensive/stable one I found on Digikey was for around $1800
it goes like this:

$1783   0.1ppb
$1222   0.2ppb
 $759   0.5ppb
 and then once we get into the economy units it's all downhill from there ....
 $305  10ppb

so what's the stability of a $10K-20K OCXO?

[Vgkid]

and could run you $10K to $20K each, just for the OCXO's).

When I started being in the market  for an OCXO (once in the market, you are always in the market!)
the most expensive/stable one I found on Digikey was for around $1800
it goes like this:

$1783   0.1ppb
$1222   0.2ppb
 $759   0.5ppb
 and then once we get into the economy units it's all downhill from there ....
 $305  10ppb

so what's the stability of a $10K-20K OCXO?

One of these would work, Rakon HSO14. Since the OSA BVA has been discontinued.
http://www.rakon.com/products/families/download/file?fid=39.276
I see they have a HSO13. * I got sick to my stomach seeing that appear. I will explain later.