A recent breakthrough has paved the way for timekeeping even more precise than the measurements performed by atomic clocks.

An international team at JILA is pioneering a nuclear clock that surpasses current atomic clocks in precision, potentially enabling advancements in GPS, internet synchronization, and secure communications.

It might not sound like there is much difference between the two clocks at first glance, but it’s all about scale. Atomic clocks base their timekeeping on measuring the exact vibrations of individual atoms to designate a single second.

Pretty much everything in the digital world relies on ultra-precise clocks running behind the scenes. Scientific research now paves the way for new improvements on how they "tick", which could bolster the precision of navigation equipment and improve how many businesses work.