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 ...

Researchers demonstrated a new optical atomic clock that uses a single laser and doesn't require cryogenic temperatures. By greatly reducing the size and complexity of atomic clocks without ...

An international research team has taken a decisive step toward a new generation of atomic clocks. The researchers have created a much more precise pulse generator based on the element scandium, which ...

An extremely cold gas of strontium atoms is trapped in a web of light known as an optical lattice. The atoms are held in an ultrahigh-vacuum environment, which means there is almost no air or other ...

Atomic clocks. They almost sound like something out of science fiction, or an experiment confined to some elite physics lab, but in reality, they’ve been around since the 1950s in one form or another.

The heart of a minuscule atomic clock—believed to be 100 times smaller than any other atomic clock—has been demonstrated by scientists at the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and ...

From freeze-dried strawberries to memory foam and scratch-resistant glasses, space exploration is the force behind a myriad of life-changing innovations. Now it’s time for a terrestrial innovation to ...