Australian researchers have developed the world's most sensitive thermometer, which is three times as accurate as any other.
The thermometer, which comes from a team at the University of Adelaide in South Australia, can pinpoint temperatures to 30 billionths of a degree, Laboratory Equipment reported.
"We believe this is the best measurement ever made of temperature--at room temperature," said study leader Andre Luiten, who is chair of the school's Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing, as quoted by Laboratory Equipment.
The researchers, who published their findings in the journal Physical Review Letters, built a thermometer that injects red and green light into a polished crystalline disk, where the two colors move at different speeds based on temperature.
"When we heat up the crystal we find that the red light slows down by a tiny amount with respect to the green light," Luiten said. "To emphasize how precise this is, when we examine the temperature of an object we find that it is always fluctuating. We all knew that if you looked closely enough you find that all the atoms in any material are always jiggling about, but we actually see this unceasing fluctuation with our thermometer, showing that the microscopic world is always in motion."
The unusual technique can also be applied to measure pressure, humidity or force, Luiten noted.
"Being able to measure many different aspects of our environment with such a high degree of precision, using instruments small enough to carry around, has the capacity to revolutionize technologies used for a variety of industrial and medical applications where detection of trace amounts has great importance," said Luiten, as quoted by Laboratory Equipment.
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