[time-nuts] Maser 0.7 nsec jumps solved

Jim Palfreyman jim77742 at gmail.com
Sat May 21 21:58:32 EDT 2016


Hi all,

Awhile back I posted about some mysterious 0.7 ns jumps in three different
masers (of the same brand) at three different locations around Australia.

Well we think we've found the problem. All three locations also have
in-room air conditioners of the same brand. These are used for cooling
only. When these units turn on, we think they induce a magnetic field from
the inrush current that briefly disrupts the maser. We don't think it's
electrical because moving to another phase did not change things.

These air conditioners are all quite close to the masers. Typically a metre
or 2 away.

Much was done to discover this, but the clincher was that when the weather
cooled enough at the southern most location (Hobart), we turned off the air
con (only heating was needed) and the problem vanished.

So there's a lesson here for all maser owners. The jump of 0.7 nsec is not
much, but it's huge for VLBI and for time-nuts.


Jim Palfreyman


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