The internal structure of the thorium-229m nuclear state has been studied in detail for the first time by physicists in Germany. Thorium-229m is a metastable (or isomer) excited state of thorium-229 ...

Physicists have made one of the highest performance atomic clocks ever. ­­ Their instrument, known as an optical lattice atomic clock, can measure differences in time to a precision equivalent to ...

Picture a clock ticking so steadily that it doesn’t lose a second, even after running for 1 billion years. Scientists are now closer than ever to realizing that level of timekeeping precision, new ...

The first optical clock to be operated in space has been launched by Matthias Lezius and colleagues at the Germany-based Menlo Systems. Based on a frequency-comb laser system, the optical clock ...

Time travel has shifted from pure fantasy to a serious, if highly constrained, topic in modern physics. The equations that ...

Measuring time using oscillations of atomic nuclei might significantly improve precision beyond that of current atomic clocks. Physicists have now taken an important step toward this goal. Measuring ...

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