Press releases 2015

Sometimes things start to age. And then they need to be revived. This is why PTB has developed a new Internet site – with a new design, a new structure and lots of new material. Particular attention has been paid to being up-to-date and user-friendliness. On 18 May 2015 the old website was "taken off the web" and replaced by the new one – which is available at the old address (www.ptb.de).

Frequent fliers are now able to monitor their personal radiation exposure when flying using the TrackYourDose app. Behind the app lies intensive research work undertaken by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB). Since 1997 PTB has studied the cosmic radiation at typical flight altitudes and, based on this, it has developed mathematical models for calculating radiation levels. By...

It's a real pressure-cooker. In the international contest over the most accurate definition of the kilogram, researchers of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) now not only have the recipe in their pocket, they have also gathered all the components: They have set up a complex chain of many manufacturing and analytical steps in order to - by counting the atoms in a silicon sphere −...

The second and the metre have already surged ahead. The kilogram, the ampere and the other physical base units are now trying to catch up. This is one way of describing what is currently happening in the world of metrology, in the world of measuring. The International System of Units is facing a redefinition of its foundations: fundamental constants are to serve as the defining reference values...

A team of researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt in Braunschweig and the University of Aarhus in Denmark demonstrated for the first time Coulomb crystallization of highly-charged ions (HCIs). Inside a cryogenic radiofrequency ion trap the HCIs are cooled down to sub-Kelvin temperatures by interaction with laser-cooled...