Every single day, humans rely on hundreds of hidden clocks. GPS location, Internet stability, stock trading, power grid management ... all rely on atomic clocks in order to work. Many of those clocks ...

Most clocks, from wristwatches to the systems that run GPS and the internet, work by tracking regular, repeating motions. To build a clock, you need something that ticks in a perfectly repeatable way.

For the first time, scientists used an atomic nucleus as a clock. The world’s most precise timepieces are made using atoms, specifically their electrons. But clocks based on atomic nuclei — protons ...