The world's first nuclear clocks have ticked. A team of physicists has demonstrated a working timekeeping device regulated not by orbiting electrons — as in conventional atomic clocks — but by ...

The timekeeping device is made with atomic nuclei of thorium, although it is not yet more precise than standard atomic clocks. Reading time 2 minutes Meet the “nuclear” clock: a device that marks the ...

For the first time, scientists used an atomic nucleus as a clock. The world’s most precise timepieces are made using atoms, specifically their electrons. But clocks based on atomic nuclei — protons ...

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.

For decades, physicists have pursued a goal that sounds nearly impossible: to build a clock that keeps time using an atom's nucleus rather than the electrons orbiting it. "Having worked in this field ...