It's Memorial Day, Short Wavers. This holiday, we bring you a meditation on time ... and clocks. There are hundreds of atomic clocks in orbit right now, perched on satellites all over Earth. We depend ...

Atomic clocks are based upon quartz crystals. These crystals vibrate at a very uniform rate when an electric current is passed through them. By measuring minute variations in those vibrations over ...

Atomic clocks record time using microwaves to measure the frequency of quantum vibrations of electrons. They are the basis upon which a second is defined. But there’s a new kid on the block, the ...