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Nuclear spectroscopy breakthrough could rewrite fundamental constants of nature

The findings could unlock the most accurate clock ever and allow advances like deep space navigation, communication.

By causing the electrons to bond with fluorine in a transparent crystal, UCLA physicists have finally succeeded in exciting the neutrons in a thorium atom’s nucleus using a moderate amount of laser light. Hudson’s group was the first to propose a series of experiments to stimulate thorium-229 nuclei doped into crystals with a laser, and has spent the past 15 years working to achieve the newly published results. “What we can observe from our limited perspective is a conglomeration of effects at different scales of size, time and energy and the constants of nature we’ve formulated seem to hold at this level.

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