For many years, cesium atomic clocks have been reliably keeping time around the world. But the future belongs to even more accurate clocks: optical atomic clocks. In a few years' time, they could ...

Scientific clockmakers have crafted a prototype of a nuclear clock, hinting at future possibilities for using atomic nuclei to perform precise measurements of time and make new tests of fundamental ...

Most clocks, from wristwatches to the systems that run GPS and the internet, work by tracking regular, repeating motions. To build a clock, you need something that ticks in a perfectly repeatable way.

Nuclear clocks are the next big thing in ultra-precise timekeeping. Recent publications in the journal Nature propose a new method and new technology to build the clocks. Timekeeping has become more ...

Physicists like to measure things, and they like those measurements to be as precise as possible. That means working at unfathomably small scales, where distances are much smaller than even the ...

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Researchers 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 ...

Atomic clocks use quantum physics and the resonant frequency of atoms, like cesium, to define time. Modern timekeeping relies on the accuracy of atomic clocks, which revolutionized timekeeping by ...

For many years, scientists all around the world have been working towards this goal, now suddenly things are happening very fast: it was only in April that a team led by Prof Thorsten Schumm (TU Wien, ...