The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) U.S. has set a new world record for the most accurate aluminum ion-based optical atomic clock. This clock sets a new time-keeping benchmark, ...

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 ...

The most precise clocks ever built are now testing Einstein, hunting dark matter, and reshaping how we define time itself. The world’s most precise clocks are changing how we understand time itself: ...

Nobel laureate Arthur Schawlow’s advice to “never measure anything but frequency” is a central principle of modern precision metrology and timekeeping. Today’s spectroscopy is advanced enough to teach ...

In 2008, a team of UCLA-led scientists proposed a scheme to use a laser to excite the nucleus of thorium atoms to realize extremely accurate, portable clocks. Last year, they realized this ...

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 ...

Vladan Vuletić with members of his Experimental Atomic Physics group. From left to right: Matthew Radzihovsky, Leon Zaporski, Qi Liu, Vladan Vuletić, and Gustavo Velez. Every time you check the time ...

Unlike other atoms (left), ytterbium-173 (right) has a large nuclear spin and a strongly deformed nucleus whose strong fields interact with the electron shell. This turns forbidden quantum jumps into ...

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 ...

A trial led by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) has supported the development of next-generation atomic clock tech.