Finding New Answers with the Nuclear Clock

A new and more precise way of measuring time is the aim of an international research project in which Würzburg physicist Adriana Pálffy-Buß is involved. The results could also help in the search for dark matter. The global navigation system GPS, digital data traffic in the telephone network, measuring the earth from satellites: All these technologies would not work without precise timekeepers. Here, a few billionths of a second are crucial for the results to be correct. Science - especially physics - is also dependent on extremely precise clocks if it wants to find out, for example, what dark matter is made of or whether natural constants are actually constant. A fundamentally new basis for such a high-precision timepiece is the focus of an international research project that has now been approved. At the end of 2023, the Austrian Science Fund FWF has set up a so-called "Special Research Area" for this purpose, comparable to a Collaborative Research Centre of the German Research Foundation (DFG).