Two Teams Just Built the First Nuclear Clocks, and They Could Outlast the Universe
In Vienna and Beijing, the first (thorium) nuclear clocks begin to tick
Two independent teams in Vienna and Beijing have built the first clocks that keep time by counting the squishing and unsquishing of thorium-229 nuclei, reported Wednesday in Nature. The nuclear clocks would lose one second every few million years. They are not yet as precise as the best atomic clocks, which would take over 100 billion years to lose a second, but they promise greater portability and even a way to hunt for dark matter.
If a particle of dark matter passed through the thorium nuclei, it could register as a wobble in the nuclear clock's otherwise steady ticktock.
- dgacmu
The actual journal article, since NYT didn't bother linking to it: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-11084-4
- austin-cheney
According to Wikipedia thorium is probably created from neutron stars or supernovae making it one of the rarest elements in the galaxy. But, it’s quite abundant on Earth, maybe 3x as abundant as Uranium on earths crust. Because of this abundance it is, along with Radon, the primary constituent of earths natural background radiation.
- jhoho
Much better use than for toothpaste.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doramad_Radioactive_Toothpaste
- KellyCriterion
https://unwall.app/www.nytimes.com/2026/10/07/science/first-...
- pclowes
How do they know the accuracy of the clock? Eg: 2s of drift in 65M years.
Naively, measuring that seems more difficult than the clock. Wouldn’t you need a perfect clock as a baseline? There must be something really clever here.