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: ...

For the first time, an international team of physicists has successfully harnessed a rare orbital transition in atoms of ...

A string of experiments using thorium-229 nuclei has brought the long-theorized nuclear clock closer to reality, producing frequency measurements stable enough to challenge the atomic clocks that ...

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 ...

Claire Cramer, the executive director of quantum science at the University of California, Berkeley, who was in attendance, expressed optimism about the potential of solid-state nuclear clocks: “This ...

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 ...