The world's first nuclear clocks have ticked. A team of physicists has demonstrated a working timekeeping device regulated not by orbiting electrons — as in conventional atomic clocks — but by ...

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 ...

The best timekeepers today—atomic clocks—work off the quantum vibrations of an atom, specifically its electrons. But physicists have long dreamt of even better clocks that run on atomic nuclei, which ...

An ultra-precise measurement of a transition in the hearts of thorium atoms gives physicists a tool to probe the forces that bind the universe. At 11:30 one night in May 2024, a graduate student, ...

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. Now, researchers have ...

FOR THE discerning timekeeper, only an atomic clock will do. Whereas the best quartz timepieces will lose a millisecond every six weeks, an atomic clock might not lose a thousandth of one in a decade.

A clock based on radioactive thorium atoms realises a long-held ambition, demonstrating a technology that could eventually beat the accuracy of today’s best atomic clocks ...