A major step forward in the field of highly accurate timekeeping was achieved by scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Maryland, USA, who created the world’s first nuclear clock.

Unlike atomic clocks, which track the oscillations of atoms jumping between two energy levels, the nuclear clock uses signals from the nucleus of an atom to measure time.

“Imagine a wristwatch that doesn’t lose a single second even if you let it run for billions of years,” said Jun Ye, one of the researchers and Physicist
“Although we are not there yet, this research brings us closer to that level of precision,” he added.

In July, a different team of researchers presented the most accurate atomic clock ever built, which loses a single second every 30 billion years.

The nuclear clock is no more accurate than today’s atomic clocks, but is expected to surpass them within a few years.

Nuclear clocks will be 60 times more accurate than atomic clocks, barely “missing”. 1 second every 200 billion years.

The invention

Atomic clocks are the most accurate method available for measuring time. They coordinate international time zones and synchronize Internet and financial transactions. They work by monitoring the frequency resonances of atoms, usually for the chemical elements cesium or rubidium. This process allows atomic clocks to measure time with an extremely high degree of accuracy. In contrast, conventional clocks use a quartz crystal oscillator to measure time. The crystals vibrate at specific frequencies that measure the passage of time. Nuclear clocks are more accurate than atomic clocks because the nucleus is less affected by external disturbances such as magnetic fields.

However, building a nuclear clock is not straightforward, because the energy jumps required to operate a nuclear clock can only be created by high-energy coherent X-rays that current laser technology cannot produce.

So the researchers chose thorium-229, as its nucleus needs a smaller energy jump than any other known atom.

To create the nuclear clock, the team combined one strontium atomic clock with a crystal contained thorium nuclei.

“With this first prototype, we have demonstrated that thorium can be used as a timer for extremely high-precision measurements,” said Thorsten Schum, one of the study’s authors and a Physicist at the University of Vienna in Austria. “All we have left to do is technical development work, as we don’t expect any other major hurdles,” he added.

The findings of the study were published in the journal Nature.

With information from Gizmodo, ERT