A nuclear clock now keeps its own laser steady, TU Wien reports in Nature
Researchers built a thorium-based clock that corrects a laser by itself. It ran for over 24 hours, but it is still an early prototype.
Scientists built a clock that uses the inside of an atom to keep time. It can now fix its own laser without help. It is a lab test, not a product yet.
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Why it matters
Better clocks help navigation, networks and science. This one shows a new way to build them, though it is years from products.
Worth a look: a clock built from the core of an atom.
The details
- A team at TU Wien, led by Prof. Thorsten Schumm, published the work in Nature (DOI 10.1038/s41586-026-11084-4).
- The nucleus of thorium-229 has two energy states very close together, so a laser can switch it between them.
- Thorium nuclei absorb light only at one exact frequency, so they can correct drift in the laser.
- The clock ran for more than 24 hours without help. Its precision is about 1 part in 10^15.
- It is not yet as precise as the best atomic clocks. The team plans stronger lasers and better crystals.
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