Aerospace and Mechanical Insider on MSN

Quantum breakthrough reveals ultra‑stable clocks for deep‑space navigation

How does a clock become precise enough to guide a spacecraft across interstellar distance without drifting a single second ...

Physicists use thorium-229 to power the world's first working nuclear clock

A clock built from thorium-229 has crossed an important line, from a long-discussed concept to a working device. The shift ...
Starlust on MSN

Could the first people on Mars need their own time system? Here's what a NASA researcher says

Without a standard time system, clocks around Mars would all run on slightly different times.

‘Mini Universe’ built from ultracold atoms measures time without a clock

A trapped cloud of ultracold atoms, colder than almost anything found in nature, has become the setting for a deceptively ...
Optics

Optical atomic clock achieves record accuracy redefining the second

The next generation of atomic clocks "ticks" at the frequency of a laser. That is around 100,000 times faster than the microwave frequencies of the caesium clocks that currently generate the second.
Nature

Ultrastable optical clock with two cold-atom ensembles

Optical atomic clocks operate by tuning the frequency of a laser (optical local oscillator, OLO) into resonance with a narrowband electronic transition in an atomic system 4,5. By so doing, the ...