Keeping time is easy, keeping precise time is hard, but a new type of clock based on atomic nuclei has pushed time-keeping precision to new levels.

For decades, physicists have pursued a goal that sounds nearly impossible: to build a clock that keeps time using an atom's nucleus rather than the electrons orbiting it. "Having worked in this field ...

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story: Atomic clocks have been around for nearly 80 years, but their successors—nuclear clocks—are ready to take the stage. Two independent studies, both ...

For the first time, scientists used an atomic nucleus as a clock. The world’s most precise timepieces are made using atoms, specifically their electrons. But clocks based on atomic nuclei — protons ...

Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. A new study suggests trapped-ion atomic clocks could detect quantum superpositions of time, opening a path toward uniting quantum ...

Researchers have demonstrated a new optical atomic clock that uses a single laser and doesn't require cryogenic temperatures. By greatly reducing the size and complexity of atomic clocks without ...

The timekeeping device is made with atomic nuclei of thorium, although it is not yet more precise than standard atomic clocks. Reading time 2 minutes Meet the “nuclear” clock: a device that marks the ...

Atomic clocks that excite the nucleus of thorium-229 embedded in a transparent crystal when hit by a laser beam could yield the most accurate measurements ever of time and gravity, and even rewrite ...

Researchers in the Neutral Atom Optical Clocks Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), University of Colorado and Pennsylvania State University recently devised a new ...

CC0 Usage Conditions ApplyClick for more information. Harold Lyons was a physicist whose primary interest was in atomic frequency standards and atomic clocks. The collection documents Lyons and his ...