Atomic clocks leveraged the atom to keep time, but new innovations will use the nucleus itself.

World's first thorium-229 nuclear clock shows potential for ultra-precise timekeeping and fundamental physics tests.

An NIST physicist holds the newly modified ion trap for the aluminum ion clock. By modifying the trap, the aluminum ion and its magnesium ion partner could 'tick' unperturbed. Optical atomic clocks ...

Two independent research teams have achieved a longstanding goal in physics: building a working nuclear clock. The devices, ...

Possibly originating with the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer's "time and tide wait for no man," the idea that time waits for no man has been around for a long time. But time, or at least the latest ...

As if timekeeping in the U.S. wasn’t already pretty accurate, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) just declared a new atomic clock, the NIST-F2, to ...

At this point, atomic clocks are old news. They’ve been quietly keeping our world on schedule for decades now, and have been through several iterations with each generation gaining more accuracy. They ...

The way time is measured is on the edge of a historic upgrade. At the heart of this change is a new kind of atomic clock that uses light instead of microwaves. This shift means timekeeping could ...

This feature is only available to members. Join now for full online access. Years ago, the world's most complicated clock was displayed for the first time in the town hall in Copenhagen, Denmark. It ...