Scientists have taken a major step toward the ambitious global goal of “redefining the second” by the end of this decade. A ...

While most atomic clocks rely on changes in energy levels of electrons outside the nucleus, this isotope allows scientists to work with the quantum states inside the nucleus itself. The first ...

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Research Laboratory of Electronics developed the first commercial atomic clocks around the same time, and these were manufactured by the National Company ...

The thorium atomic nuclei can now be used as a time keeping device, making the clock even more precise – it is the world's first nuclear clock. It does not yet deliver greater precision than an ...

Over the 2000s and 2010s, several teams entered the race to build the first nuclear clock. To win, they needed to figure out the exact energy a laser would need to excite the nuclear state in question ...

But apparently that’s not accurate enough – nuclear clocks could steal their thunder, speeding up GPS and the internet, among other things. Now, scientists have built and tested the first ...

Now they have finally succeeded. The world’s first nuclear clock, created in Boulder, Colo., by an international team of scientists, was detailed in a paper published in Nature. Although this ...

That’s why the newly described clock runs on thorium, whose nucleus only requires ultraviolet light to make energy jumps. “With this first prototype, we have proven: Thorium can be used as a ...

The system needs further optimising, but “It’s the first demonstration that all the components of a nuclear clock are here,” says Mr Zhang. Because atomic clocks are more than accurate ...