Every time you check the time on your phone, make an online transaction, or use a navigation app, you are depending on the ...

FOR THE discerning timekeeper, only an atomic clock will do. Whereas the best quartz timepieces will lose a millisecond every six weeks, an atomic clock might not lose a thousandth of one in a decade.

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 ...

A tomic clocks, which power GPS, online transactions, and data networks, just became more precise. MIT physicists have developed a technique that doubles the accuracy of optical atomic clocks by ...

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 ...

Every single day, humans rely on hundreds of hidden clocks. GPS location, Internet stability, stock trading, power grid management ... all rely on atomic clocks in order to work. Many of those clocks ...

Optical clocks are highly precise timekeeping devices that measure time by tracking the oscillations of light, as opposed to ...

Physicists have demonstrated all the ingredients of a nuclear clock — a device that keeps time by measuring tiny energy shifts inside an atomic nucleus. Such clocks could lead to vast improvements in ...

The nucleus of an atom is now the modern version of sand flowing through an hourglass. Researchers have spent 15 years trying to increase accuracy in timekeeping. The U.S. standard currently relies on ...

Poland has just started up one of the few optical atomic clocks in the world that puts old cesium fountain atomic clocks to shame. Share on Facebook (opens in a new window) Share on X (opens in a new ...

Atomic clocks that excite the nucleus of thorium-229 embedded in a transparent crystal when hit by a laser beam could yield the most accurate measurements ever of time and gravity, and even rewrite ...