James is a published author with multiple pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, space, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.View full profile James is a ...

For decades, physicists have pursued a goal that sounds nearly impossible: to build a clock that keeps time using an atom's nucleus rather than the electrons orbiting it. "Having worked in this field ...

For nearly 50 years, physicists have dreamed of the secrets they could unlock by raising the energy state of an atom's nucleus using a laser. The achievement would allow today's atomic clocks to be ...

Time already behaves strangely in modern physics. It can stretch, slow, and split depending on speed and gravity. Now a new theoretical study pushes that weirdness into even stranger territory. It ...

ESA's Atomic Clock Ensemble in Space (ACES) has arrived at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, United States. This cutting-edge European experiment will test fundamental physics from the outside ...

The famed Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887, in which perpendicular beams of light were raced against each other, seemed to show that a light-carrying ether pervading all space did not exist.

Cold atom experiments are among the most powerful and precise ways of investigating and measuring the universe and exploring the quantum world. By trapping atoms and exploiting their quantum ...

Pictures of the components used in making an atomic clock. The ion trap (left image) holds the clock in place. The optical/laser apparatus (right images) measures the clock’s frequency. Fukuoka, Japan ...