What started as a hobby became a full-blown business for Harold MacVittie more than a decade ago. His Chapin clock shop is still ticking.

Atomic clocks. They almost sound like something out of science fiction, or an experiment confined to some elite physics lab, but in reality, they’ve been around since the 1950s in one form or another.

Most timepieces people use to tell time are accurate to within 10 or 15 seconds every month. Fancy mechanical watches (like a Rolex) will be off by more — a second or two each day. Scientists need ...

Humans have tracked time in one way or another in every civilization we have records of, writes physicist Chad Orzel. In his new book A Brief History of Timekeeping (BenBella Books, 2022), Orzel ...

Inside a laboratory nestled in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, amid a labyrinth of lenses, mirrors, and other optical machinery bolted to a vibration-resistant table, an apparatus resembling a ...